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The complete run of the antifascist periodical The Lantern, association copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper by a member of the editorial board, "For Norman Di Giovanni. Aldino Felicani. August 9, 1963". Di Giovanni was close friends with Felicani and catalogued his Sacco-Vanzetti materials, which are now held at the Boston Public Library. Aldino Felicani (1891-1967) fled Italy to America in 1914 upon facing prison for political charges. Trained as a printer and based in Boston, he worked on a variety of other radical newspapers during his lifetime, including La Notizia (The News) and L'Agitazione (The Agitation). He was a fierce public defender of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists who were controversially executed in 1927 despite worldwide protests; Felicani founded the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee in an attempt to argue for their innocence, and, following their execution, he frequently used The Lantern to highlight the injustice of the case. Many suspected Sacco and Vanzetti innocent of the charge of murder, and that racist and anti-anarchist biases played a role in their trials. These arguments formed the basis of numerous legal reinvestigations as well as reimaginations in popular culture. Shining a light on the political evils of the late 1920s, The Lantern was first issued with the appeal: "In publishing this, our first, issue of The Lantern, we want to manifest our sympathy toward the multitudes of Italian exiles throughout the world, to the thousands of families suffering from the barbarity of Fascist dictatorship, and to numberless dead, victims of Mussolini's ignorance and greed. To them we pledge our word to continue to expose the truth about Fascism". The recipient Norman Thomas di Giovanni (1933-2017) is perhaps most well known as the translator of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, whom he met during Borges's lectureship at Harvard in late 1967, resulting in a lengthy friendship. Di Giovanni translated several of Borges's works, who insisted that di Giovanni be awarded an equal share of the royalties. Loosely inserted in this copy is a reader's note on six articles found in The Lantern. Quarto (292 x 212 mm). Contemporary red buckram, flat spine lettered in gilt. With the original yellow, orange, and green illustrated wrappers of the three vol. II issues bound in (vol. I was issued without them). Spine sunned and marked, light spotting to edges, pastedowns, and occasionally to margins, otherwise internally bright and clean. A very good copy. Seller Inventory # 148256
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