"Tutto il sesso femminino per mia bocca v’intima guerra" (Through My Mouth, the Entire Female Sex Declares War on You), Signed: A European Woman

Abstract

This chapter reconstructs the traces of an editorial project that in 1829 the publisher Stella, of Milan, intended to dedicate to the most famous women of Europe of his time, having pictorial portraits and in-depth articles about them realized by the most important names of nineteenth-century European culture (in Italy: Giacomo Leopardi). The project, which constitutes an interesting antecedent of the current transnational manuals dedicated to women’s writing, did not see the light of day, or rather: it did not see the light of day in the form initially planned. On the basis of new sources, in fact, the essay shows how, not even a decade later, behind the cover of a French translation—a precaution taken for political reasons—Stella succeeded in carrying out his intent.