ITALIAN EDITION OF OUR TOWN TRANSLATED by NOTED MID 20th CENTURY FEMALE TRANSLATOR WILDER CALLS HER TRANSLATION "ONE OF THE WORST TRANSLATIONS POSSIBLE"

PICCOLA CITTÀ [OUR TOWN], by THORNTON WILDER. Published by Franco Campitelli, Editore, Roma, 1944. Softcovers, French flaps, 5.5x8.5 inches. ITALIAN edition, translated from the English by Alessandra Scalero.

SIGNED, INSCRIBED by THORNTON WILDER to Fellow Playwright GEORGE KELLEY:

"George Kelley - Cordial greetings / Thornton Wilder / Hamden Conn / January 1950."

Below which Thornton wrote (caps added for emphasis):

"Note page 73 - The Translator has omitted 'the address on the envelope' - one of the many places which render this version one of the WORST TRANSLATIONS POSSIBLE."

GOOD MINUS condition, the covers are lightly toned, have some corner and edge creases, there is a chip to the top edge, and the front spine fold is separating for 3 inches; internally, the pages are toned, especially at the margins, and the binding is a bit shaky but holding. Overall a complete copy, made special with the bitter inscription by Thornton Wilder.

ALESSANDRA SCALERO was an important FEMALE ITALIAN TRANSLATOR who translated many important works, including Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and was considered a feminist scholar who, amazingly was able to capture the essence of subversive novels, including Orlando, in Italy during the repressive 1930's and 1940's. You can read about her online. Here are a couple tidbits:

"Translating Orlando in 1930s Fascist Italy: Virginia Woolf, Arnoldo Mondadori, and Alessandra Scalero // The first full translation of Orlando in Italian was published on 1 October 1933 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. What made the Italian translation of Orlando such a literary and economic success was not only the brilliance of the novel but also, as I shall show, the lexical expertise of its translator, Alessandra Scalero. In her translation Scalero was able to remain true to the spirit and the style of a subversive novel and what is more remarkable, she accomplished this feat in a climate of repressive censorship."

"Alessandra Scalero worked as a literary translator from English, German, and French for the publishing houses Mondadori and Il Corbaccio, from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. She translated novels by many prominent authors including Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, John Dos Passos and Daphne Du Mauier and often translated works for Mondadori's Medusa series. Scalero translated Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop into Italian in 1936, and Cather was impressed with the quality of the work."