'This England is so Different ...': Italo Svevo's London Writings.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-APR-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association

'This England is so Different ...': Italo Svevo's London Writings. Ed., trans., and intro. by JOHN GATT-RUTTER and BRIAN MOLONEY. Market Harborough: Troubadour. 2003. x + 265 pp. 13.99[pounds sterling]. ISBN 1-899293-59-0.

For many years there has been discussion about the need for an English translation of Svevo's correspondence and essays, and at last we have one, completed by two of the most eminent svevisti. As the title of the volume indicates, they have focused on the letters and articles that Svevo wrote while in England, where he spent long periods from 1901 to 1926.

Svevo did not come to England as a renowned novelist and did not frequent the literary milieux of London's intelligentsia. He was sent by his employers, who were also his parents-in-law, to set up a subsidiary of the international firm Fabbrica Colori e Vernici Gioachino Veneziani, to produce anti-corrosive paint for the ships of the British Navy. He came as Ettore Schmitz, businessman, not as Italo Svevo, writer. Between 1901 and 1908, when his wife did not...

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