Italica Press Catalog 64, Summer 2026

Our Italica Press Catalog 64, for Summer 2026, is now available and ready for download. It features five new and recently published titles, plus our complete backlist. This season offers a fine selection of medieval and Renaissance texts, historical geography and cosmology, studies in art and history, and modern Italian fiction and poetry.

New and recent titles include Songs of Castelvecchio, Giovanni Pascoli’s most important collection of verse; Gregorio Dati’s La Sfera / The Globe: Cosmology, Science, and Geography in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean; Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda’s The Mother; William Tronzo’s Four Mediterranean Capitals: Rome, Constantinople, Palermo, and Venice. Essays in Architecture and Visual Experience; and the next volume in our series of Italian Crime Writers, Grazia Verasani’s Nowhere Fast. Please have a look at our Catalog 64.

Catalog 63, Winter 2026, Now Available for Download

Our Catalog 63, Winter 2026, is now available for download. It presents our entire backlist, with all pricing and ordering information, and all our current series offerings. This season we offer seven new and recent titles ranging from intellectual, architectural, and urban history to cosmological and geographical work, Renaissance drama, dual-language poetry, a contemporary novel, and Italian crime fiction. 

Please have a look.

40th Anniversary Catalog now released.

We are very happy to announce the release of our Catalog 62 to mark the 40th Anniversary of Italica Press. Inside you'll find 82 pages, including a letter to our readers, a listing of all our authors, editors, and translators for the past 40 years, six new and recent titles, and all our current series offerings.

We’re quite proud of our four decades of publishing among the best medieval, early modern, and contemporary authors in well edited, reviewed, and affordable editions. Please have a look and download our Catalog 62.

Catalog 59 Now Online

Our Italica Press Catalog 59, for Summer 2021, is now available and ready for download. It contains eleven new and recently published titles, plus our complete backlist.

As we emerge from an extended year of Covid lockdowns, this new season offers a rich selection of medieval and Renaissance texts, history, and modern Italian fiction. We’ve also now completed two ongoing series and have launched a new one.

We are pleased to announce the publication of several important new medieval and Renaissance titles. The first, a new volume in our Studies in Art & History, is Irving Lavin’s The Art of Commemoration in the Renaissance, his Slade Lectures at Oxford, newly edited by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin.

Catherine M. Jones and William W. Kibler offer the first modern English translation of Huon of Bordeaux, a perennial favorite since its first appearance in the thirteenth century as a French chanson de geste. 

We are also very pleased to present James A. Palmer’s first complete English translation of The Chronicle of an Anonymous Roman: Rome, Italy, and Latin Christendom, c.1325–1360. Available previously only in partial versions focusing on Cola di Rienzo, the Anonimo Romano’s work is now published in its entirety with introduction, notes, index, and bibliography.

The next two volumes in our Documentary History of Naples complete that series. Rabun M. Taylor presents Ancient Naples: A Documentary History: Origins to c.350 CE, the first comprehensive survey of ancient Naples in the English language, tracing the history of the city from its origins into late antiquity. 

Charlotte Nichols & James H. Mc Gregor’s Renaissance Naples: A Documentary History, 1400–1600 offers the first English-language collection of sources to treat the city of Naples from the end of the medieval into the early modern period.

Thomas F. Coffey and Maryjane Dunn have completed the first English translation of The Sermons and Liturgy of Saint James: Book I of the Liber Sancti Jacobi. This is the fifth and final of a series publishing modern English translations of and commentary on the Codex Calixtinus in our Compostela Project.

Kiril Petkov brings us another important Mediterranean text with his From Cyprus to Lepanto, an annotated translation of the History of Giovanni Pietro Contarini on the battle of Lepanto in 1571 and its contexts. 

Finally, we’ve published four new titles in our Modern Italian Fiction series. The first is New Italian Voices, translated and edited by Cinzia Sartini Blum and Deborah L. Contrada. This major new collection includes accomplished, award-winning Italian writers from India and Syria, Eastern Europe, North and sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Italy.

Ivy, by Nobel Prize winning novelist Grazia Deledda, has been translated from the Italian, with introduction, by Mary Ann Frese Witt and Martha Witt. It is part of our ongoing project to publish Deledda’s corpus.

The next two works are part of our new series of Italian Crime Writers. The first is Agony, the first English-language translation, by Andrew Edwards, of Federico De Roberto’s Spasimo, a psychological-detective novel set in 19th-century Lausanne. De Roberto, a master of verismo, is celebrated today for his acute political, social, and psychological insights. 

The second moves to the closing days of World War II in Sicily with A Conspiracy of Talkers by Gaetano Savatteri, translated by Steve Eaton. American Lieutenant Benjamin Adano investigates some missing U.S. Army trucks, while the Carabinieri craft a conspiracy to implicate an innocent man for a mayor’s murder and to protect the dead man’s enemies. 

 

Catalog 58 Now Available

Our Italica Press Catalog 58 for Fall 2019 is now available and ready for download. It contains six new titles and our complete backlist.

This season’s new offering include New Italian Voices, translated and edited by Cinzia Sartini Blum and Deborah L. Contrada. This major new collection includes Italian writers from India and Syria, Eastern Europe, North and sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Italy. This volume brings together a group of accomplished, award-winning authors of growing international acclaim.

We are pleased to announce the publication of the next volume in our Documentary History of Naples series. Volume editors Charlotte Nichols & James H. Mc Gregor present Renaissance Naples: A Documentary History 1400–1600. They offer the first comprehensive English-language collection of sources to treat the city of Naples from the end of the medieval to the early modern period. This book presents 169 readings in English translation drawn from historical, biographical, financial, literary, artistic, religious and cultural documents starting with the later Angevin dynasty and ending at the 17th century.

Eileen Gardiner also offers the next volume in her ongoing Hell-on-Line series of transcultural texts describing the infernal otherworld. Greek & Roman Hell: Visions, Tours and Descriptions of the Infernal Otherworld includes seventeen texts that range from epic poems by Homer and Virgil to plays by Aristophanes and Seneca, dialogues by Plato, satirical pieces by Lucian of Samosata, to novels and narrative poems. It provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of Greek and Roman hell.

Also new is The Miracles and Translatio of Saint James, books 2 and 3 of the Liber Sancti Jacobi. This presents a translation, with introduction, commentaries and notes by Thomas F. Coffey and Maryjane Dunn. This is the fourth of a projected five-volume series publishing modern English translations and commentary in our complete Compostela Project.   

Kiril Petkov brings us another important Mediterranean text with his From Cyprus to Lepanto, an annotated translation of the History of Giovanni Pietro Contarini. Written in Italian, Contarini’s account of the battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the events leading up to it offers a humanist historical narrative with keen and consistent reflections on the political philosophy of conflict in the context of the Ottoman-Catholic confrontation in the early modern Mediterranean. 

Finally, we’ve published another important title by Nobel Prize winning novelist Grazia Deledda: Ivy, translated from the Italian, with introduction, by Mary Ann Frese Witt and Martha Witt. Many consider Ivy to be Deledda’s best work, surpassing even Elias Portolu and Reeds in the Wind (Canne al vento). Here she deeply probes the misguided but altruistic motivation of a woman totally dependent on others who lack her own moral fortitude.

Italica Press Catalog 56, Winter 2018

Our Catalog 56, Winter 2018, is now available for download. It features six new titles for the 2017 season, plus all of Italica’s backlist.

Our big news this year is Italica’s inclusion in the JSTOR collection. All of our historical and art historical titles, and many of our literature translations are now available digitally through the JSTOR library collection for course adoptions and individual research. Please check your library’s online catalog for availability.

One of the treasures in the James Ford Bell collection at the University of Minnesota is Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Description of the Aegean and Other Islands. Evelyn Edson presents a facsimile edition of the entire manuscript, with introduction, complete transcription, English translation, notes, bibliography and index. We present this book in full color at 8.5 x 11 inches, nearly the full size of the Bell manuscript.

For the first time in English we present Grazia Verasani’s Quo Vadis, Baby? translated from the Italian, with an introduction, by Taylor Corse and Juliann Vitullo. Already a cult classic in Italy, with five sequels so far, a film by Gabriele Salvatores, and a TV mini-series on Sky, this novel introduces English readers to Private Detective Giorgia Cantini. Brutally honest, she smokes and drinks too much, exercises too little, eats on the run, and — the cardinal sin for Italian women — is a messy housekeeper. Even worse, she turns her detection skills onto the secret of her own sister’s mysterious death. Was it a suicide, or something more sinister and closer to home?

Forthcoming in January 2018 is the new dual-language edition of The Deceived by the Intronati of Siena, translated and edited by Donald Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. This 1531 masterpiece of strong woman characters, cross-dressing, gender confusion, sex, and social satire formed the inspiration for several Renaissance plays and is the ultimate source for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

January 2017 saw the publication of the new dual-language edition of Annibal Caro’s The Scruffy Scoundrels also edited and translated by Donald Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. Written in 1543, this remains a masterpiece of humanist playwriting in which drama both imitates and helps construct life. Rome itself is the main character in Caro’s comedy, as the new city of Paul III both unleashes and ultimately civilizes a wild assortment of comic types and plots.

We’ve published Torquato Tasso again with Max Wickert’s edition and translation of Rinaldo. Tasso composed his first epic poem at the age of eighteen. It combines romantic epic — a form popularized by Italian masters like Boiardo and Ariosto — with the classical influences from Virgil and Aristotle. Rinaldo is a remarkably original achievement in terms of style, organization and plot. Tasso manages to shape an enormous array of characters, geographical backdrops, uncanny events and mysterious devices into an impressively unified narrative.

Earlier this year we presented Luigi Malerba’s novel within a novel, Roman Ghosts (Fantasmi Romani), translated by Miriam Aloisio and Michael Subialka. Malerba’s drama of a loosely married professional couple captures an entire microcosm of modern Rome, a world that is deceptively calm and only apparently in order. As Rebecca West writes in her introduction to this volume, “To enter [Malerba’s world] in this fine translation is to discover just how engaging an author Luigi Malerba is.”

Italica Press now on JSTOR Books

We are pleased to announce that Italica Press has now joined the JSTOR books program, e-books available through your campus and local library's subscription. Many of our complete titles are already up and ready to read, and more will soon be following. 

Please have a look at: https://www.jstor.org/publisher/italica.

Books at JSTOR offer more than 50,000 e-books from renowned scholarly publishers, integrated with journals and primary sources on JSTOR’s easy-to-use platform.

As a nonprofit JSTOR has worked closely with librarians, publishers and scholars to develop this offering. Users can search across the full text of ebooks and journals on JSTOR. All ebook chapters are available exclusively in a DRM-free, unlimited-user model. 

Learn more at: https://about.jstor.org/whats-in-jstor/books.

Catalog 55 Now Online

Our Catalog 55, Summer 2017, is now available for download. It features nine new titles for the 2016/17 season, plus all of Italica’s backlist.

One of the treasures in the James Ford Bell collection at the University of Minnesota is Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Description of the Aegean and Other Islands. Evelyn Edson presents a facsimile edition of the entire manuscript, with introduction, complete transcription, English translation, notes, bibliography and index. We present this book in full color at 8.5 x 11 inches, nearly the full size of the Bell manuscript.

For the first time in English we present Luigi Malerba’s novel within a novel, Roman Ghosts (Fantasmi Romani), translated by Miriam Aloisio and Michael Subialka. Malerba’s drama of a loosely married professional couple captures an entire microcosm of modern Rome, a world that is deceptively calm and only apparently in order. As Rebecca West writes in her introduction to this volume, “To enter [Malerba’s world] in this fine translation is to discover just how engaging an author Luigi Malerba is.”

We continue our presentation of Torquato Tasso’s works with Rinaldo, translated and edited by Max Wickert. It combines romantic epic — a form popularized by Italian masters like Boiardo and Ariosto — with the classical influences from Virgil and Aristotle. Despite Tasso’s youth, his Rinaldo was a remarkably original achievement in terms of style, organization and plot. Italica Press has also published Tasso’s Aminta and his Love Poems for Lucrezia Bendidio.

This January saw the publication of the new dual-language edition of Annibal Caro’s The Scruffy Scoundrels by Donald Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. Written in 1543, this remains a masterpiece of humanist playwriting in which drama both imitates and helps construct life. Rome itself is the main character in Caro’s comedy, as the new city of Paul III both unleashes and ultimately civilizes a wild assortment of comic types and plots.

Luigi Pirandello was also a master poet, and George Hochfield’s new dual-language edition of Luigi Pirandello’s Selected Poems presents for the first time a selection from the entire range of Pirandello’s poetic output. Hochfield’s translation offers a sensitive and wise interpretation of that poetry. Pirandello is also universally known for his drama, and Italica Press offers excellent new English translations of his Henry IV and his Six Characters in Search of an Author. 

To celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s groundbreaking exhibition, “Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven,” Italica Press has issued a new print edition of The Holy Land in the Middle Ages: Six Travelers’ Accounts. This edition presents texts written by medieval Christian, Muslim and Jewish travelers to the Holy Land.

Catalog 54 Now Available

Our Catalog 54, Winter 2017, is now available for download.

To celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven,” Italica Press will soon issue a new print edition of The Holy Land in the Middle Ages: Six Travelers’ Accounts. This edition presents texts written by medieval Christian, Muslim and Jewish travelers to the Holy Land.

Also forthcoming this January is the new Dual-Language Edition of Annibal Caro’s The Scruffy Scoundrels by Donald Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. Written in 1543, this remains a masterpiece of humanist playwriting in which drama both imitates and helps construct life. Rome itself is the main character in Caro’s comedy, as the new city of Paul III both unleashes and ultimately civilizes a wild assortment of comic types and plots.

Luigi Pirandello is also universally known for his drama, and Italica Press offers two excellent new English editions, of his Henry IV and his Six Characters in Search of an Author. But Pirandello was also a master poet, and George Hochfield’s new dual-language edition of Luigi Pirandello’s Selected Poems presents for the first time a selection from the entire range of Pirandello’s poetic output. Hochfield’ translation offers a sensitive and wise interpretation of that poetry.

This year saw the publication of  The Complete Literary Works of Lorenzo de’ Medici, edited and translated by Guido A. Guarino. This volume presents, for the first time, the entire corpus of Lorenzo’s literary achievement in English translation. This edition provides a fresh opportunity for a thorough re-evaluation of Lorenzo’s endeavors in the light of contemporary scholarship and new critical methodologies.

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels have lately taken the literary world by storm. We are pleased to remind our readers that Italica Press published the first English translation of Ferrante’s work in 2004, in our anthology After the War, edited by Martha King. From that collection we now offer readers a digital version of Ferrante’s “Delia’s Elevator.” This selection, translated by Adria Frizzi, offers early and important insights into both the author and the subject matter of the Neapolitan novels.

Holiday stocking stuffers may also want to have a look at two titles offered by The Pierrepont Street Press. The first, A Year in Union Square: 52 Seasonal Pasta Dishes by Eileen Gardiner & Ron Musto, presents 52 seasonal pasta dishes from the publishers’ home kitchen. This handy pocket-sized guide draws recipes from family, Italian and southern French cuisines, along with influences of other Mediterranean cooking based on the changing vegetables and produce, fish, meats and dairy at the New York Union Square Market’s stands.

Pierrepont Street Press also offers René Vieuxvin’s The Pope Takes a Holiday: A Roman Romance. Vieuxvin combines the romance of Roman Holiday with a (serious) send-up of papal politics and policy that predicts many of the new turns in an age-old Church.

Got a charming little book you think we might like to publish? Founded in Brooklyn Heights in 1974, The Pierrepont Street Press has become an imprint of Italica Press that might be just the right match for your work.

Catalog 53, Summer 2016, published.

Our new  Catalog 53, Summer 2016, is now available for free download. Here are some of our offerings.

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels have lately taken the literary world by storm. We are pleased to remind our readers that Italica Press published the first English translation of Ferrante’s work in 2004, in our anthology After the War, edited by Martha King. From that collection we now offer readers a digital version of Ferrante’s short story, “Delia’s Elevator.” Ferrante’s short story, translated by Adria Frizzi, offers early and important insights into both the author and the subject matter of the Neapolitan novels.  

Next is The Complete Literary Works of Lorenzo de’ Medici, edited and translated by Guido A. Guarino. This volume presents, for the first time, the entire corpus of Lorenzo’s literary achievement in English translation. This edition provides a fresh opportunity for a thorough re-evaluation of Lorenzo’s endeavors in the light of contemporary scholarship and new critical methodologies.   

The third is Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV, translated by Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt, with an introduction by Mary Ann Frese Witt. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Pirandello plays with the theme of madness — or the pretense of madness — involving a consummate theatricality. The Witts’ edition includes the one-act play The License (La Patente), which offers an earlier version of this theme.  

Our fourth offering this season is Gianna Manzini’s Threshold. First published in 1973, this short novel still packs an immediacy of emotion and personal subjectivity unique in experimental fiction. We follow the first-person narrator on a trip not quite like others from a train station not quite of this world. Threshold captures the conflicting emotions and the closeness of loved ones through the intimacy of material objects. It joins Game Plan for a Novel (2008) and Full-Length Portrait (2011), two other novels by this highly original Italian writer published by Italica Press.  

Forthcoming titles for this Summer and Fall include Selected Poems of Luigi Pirandello, dual-language edition translated, with an introduction and notes, by George Hochfield; Torquato Tasso, Rinaldo, dual-language edition with an English verse translation, introduction and notes by Max Wickert; and Annibal Caro, The Ragged Brothers: A Prose Comedy (Gli Straccioni: The Scruffy Scoundrels), a new, dual-language edition translated with introduction and notes by Donald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella. 

Recently published titles include Patronage, Gender & the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Essays in Honor of Carolyn Valone, edited by Katherine A. McIver and Cynthia Stollhans; The Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin, edited and translated by Kevin R. Poole from Book IV of the Liber Sancti Jacobi(Codex Calixtinus); The Holy Land in the Middle Ages: Six Travelers’ Accounts. Digital Edition;Pseudo-Petrarch’s The Lives of the Popes and Emperors, translated by Aldo S. Bernardo and Reta A. Bernardo, with an introduction by Tania Zampini; and Kiril Petkov’s edition and translation of The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo by Coriolano Cippico.    

Our Catalog 53 offers all our hardcover, paperback and a variety of digital editions, including searchable PDF downloads and Kindle versions.

Italica Press Catalog 50

We’re very proud to announce the publication our Fiftieth Italica Press Catalog. Since our founding in 1985, we’ve been publishing our catalog in various forms: first as a two-fold pamphlet, then as a small — and then large — booklet sent via direct mail and in recent years as a downloadable PDF document, in full color with complete details of titles, formats and prices.

In this catalog we announce one new title, the English-language edition of Sandra C. Malicote and A. Richard Hartman’s Aiol: A Chanson de Geste. This edition is derived from the editors’ dual-language edition from the Old French and is ideal for the general reader and the undergraduate student. It contains eleven illustrations from the original manuscript, an introduction, notes, a selection of the Old French text and a bibliography.

Readers will also be interested in a forthcoming title, Coriolano Cippico’s The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo, written in 1474/75 and newly translated and edited by Kiril Petkov. The Deeds is an excellent example of Renaissance historiography put into the service of the Venetian Republic. It describes the conflict between Venice and the Ottoman Turks in graphic terms, revealing the political, military and diplomatic realities behind the crusading rhetoric and classicizing style of this long-overlooked humanist text.

Petrarch’s Two Gardens Published

Petrarch’s Two Gardens: Landscape and the Image of Movement by William Tronzo has just been published. The four essays that make up this book take as their subject gardens of the Middle Ages and Renaissance whose traces are still visible, in varying degrees, at sites in Italy and France: Palermo and Rome, the Vaucluse and Hesdin. Traces only, as these gardens have long since been emptied of the life whose insistent motion gave them shape and in the intervening years have been transformed in such a way as to entangle and obscure significant moments of their past.

The landscape it seeks to narrate, in four discrete episodes, stands not alone, as an independent and integral creation, but as an installation within a more enduring environment in much the same way that temporary “ambient architecture” — the architecture of the stage set, the showroom and the festival — stands within the framework of building and city.

This new book is the second in a collaboration with Professor Tronzo, after  Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History, 400–1400 (with Caroline Bruzelius) and is the latest volume in our continuing series, Studies in Art and History. It is the winner of the 2012 David R. Coffin Publication Grant of the Foundation for Landscape Studies. 

Petrarch’s Two Gardens is also the first title in which Italica Press has published full color art — to wonderful effect. This title is available now in hardcover and paperback, and will soon be published in a Kindle edition.

We are also happy to announce that our Catalog 49 is now available for download or viewing on screen.

Our Latest Catalog

Our latest catalog, no. 48, for Summer 2013, is now available for downloading or viewing online. We’ve revised it for easier viewing of all publication formats. It offers our complete title list, arranged by series, in all print and digital versions, with full descriptions and pricing information. This summer we’re offering three new titles.

To have a look, please click here or visit our Italica Press Home Page and follow the Download Complete Catalog link.

Winter 2012 Catalog Online

We’ve just posted our complete Winter 2012 catalog as a downloadable PDF document. It contains information on all Italica Press publications, including title, author, ISBN, description, pricing, publication date, shipping weight, cover image, and formats. 
The catalog also contains hyperlinks to title entries on our web site (with complete title information), as well as an order form. The catalog may be viewed on screen or downloaded, printed, e-mailed or mailed to your colleagues or bookbuyers.
Among the many new listings in this year’s catalog are the various editions of Michael A.H. Newth’s translation of  The Song of Roland. These include both hardcover and paperback print editions, a Kindle edition, an audio book, and a special Kindle performance edition.

Summer 2010 Catalog Now Online

Our Summer 2010 catalog is now available as a downloadable PDF document. It contains information on all Italica Press publications, including title, author, ISBN, description, pricing, publication date, shipping weight, cover image, and formats. The catalog also contains hyperlinks to title entries on our web site (with complete title information), as well as an order form. The catalog may be viewed on screen or downloaded, printed, e-mailed or mailed to your colleagues or bookbuyers.

Of special note this Summer are several new and forthcoming titles. Foremost among these is Eileen Gardiner’s The Pilgrim’s Way to St. Patrick’s Purgatory, which was published this July.

Forthcoming titles include the chanson de geste, Elye of Saint-Gilles, presented in a dual-language edition with facing French and English. It is edited and translated by A. Richard Hartman and Sandra C. Malicote. Also forthcoming is Bernard André’s The Life of Henry VII, translated with an introduction by Daniel Hobbins.

Worth noting again are three recent publications: Medieval Renaissance Baroque edited by David A. Levine and Jack Freiberg; Camillo Agrippa’s Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise, translated and edited by Ken Mondschein; and Fierabras and Floripas: A French Epic Allegory, translated and introduced by Michael A.H. Newth.

Our titles are available through our own website, through online bookstores like Amazon.com, through your local or campus bookstore, or through e-book vendors and on handhelds, including the Kindle and iPad. Formats include hardcover and paperback, PDF, EPub and Kindle versions. Our titles are also offered through most major distributors. We hope that you will take a look at our offerings, and we look forward to hearing from you.