Giuseppe Garibaldi: My Life.(Shorter notices)(Book Review)

Giuseppe Garibaldi: My Life. Hesperus Press, 173 pages, $15.95

Hesperus Classics has shed a welcome light over the book world. Inaugurated in 2002 and distributed by Trafalgar Square Books in the United States, this London-based publisher has already produced dozens of elegantly bound paperbacks of some of the more obscure works in the canon: minor works from major writers; new translations of foreign classics; texts you may never see outside of old editions. Spare in footnotes, and with limited editorial content, these books are intended for the adventurous reader, not the scholar, and almost always offer welcome surprises.

My Life, Giuseppe Garibaldi's battle-log in a new translation by Stephen Parkin, briskly follows the Italian nationalist from his landing in Italy in 1848. Fed by ill-fated republican fever, Garibaldi's campaign quickly turns into a rout. His brigade beats a retreat from Rome up the spine of Italy in a bid to generate a popular uprising ("I found not a single man willing to rally to our cause"). His wife dies en route. With republican hopes dwindling, this hero of the Risorgimento escapes to America and eventually New York, where he finds work at a compatriot's candle factory.

An impatient ten years later, Garibaldi is again called to Italy. This time he follows the Count di Cavour's plan for a unified nation under a Savoyard king. The transition of Garibaldi from idealist republican to compromising monarchist reveals his maturing nature:

 
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