Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Edizioni Fratelli Laterza, Published 1981. Hardcover, 180 pp.; 23 x 24 cm; text in Italian; printed on Fedrigoni Splendorlux coated stock by Laterza Litostampa, Bari, completed 10 July 1981; illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs and postcard reproductions, many full-page and double-page; index of names. Subscriber's copy, with the subscriber's name gilt-stamped at lower right of front cover.
In Good condition, no dust jacket. Boards covered in brown mottled paper, gilt lettering and Laterza device on front, gilt lettering on spine; moderate shelf wear with rubbing and small chips to the paper along spine edges and at corners. Spine with a few thin cracks, binding still sound. Gift inscription in ink on front free endpaper, not by the author; endpapers toned at gutter. Pages clean, otherwise unmarked. Photographic history of Bari by the city's leading folklorist and dialect scholar (1907-1995), founder of the Archivio delle Tradizioni Popolari Baresi, with his son Felice, published by subscription a year after the Laterza brothers' Bari d'altri tempi. Vintage photographs and postcards from family and collectors' archives, most from the 1890s to the 1930s, with long captions naming the shops, tradesmen, and residents in each view: Corso Cavour and the Borgo Nuovo, the fish market at Piazza del Ferrarese, pilgrims at the Basilica of San Nicola, the first flights at Bari, the Laterza family in 1910, the 1928 Bersaglieri congress, the Bari Foot-Ball Club eleven of 1908, and the 1927 Giro d'Italia stage finish on Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Dialect chapters give a short grammar of Barese, street-vendor cries, nicknames, Christmas verse, and Mario Zannini's historical drama Gioacchino Murat. The title takes zita in the Barese sense of a betrothed, "Bari, my bride," as Giacovazzo's preface explains. Also includes a two-page roll of subscribers, among them residents of Canada and the United States, and a photograph of the Laterza Litostampa pressroom staff. Contents: Presentazione del Dott. Giuseppe Giacovazzo, Direttore de La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno di Bari; Prefazione; La storia di Corso Cavour; I primi voli a Bari; Quando il barese "parla a bocca chiusa"; Enrico Annoscia, Un Toscanini del popolo (Pupe de ZZucchere); M-Mane a tagranne se deceve acchesi; Gli ultimi banditori baresi; La quarte du ppane; "Parle come t'ha ffatte mammete", Il barese, Cenni grammaticali del linguaggio popolare; "Gioacchino Murat": dramma storico di Mario Zannini; Le chidde ca scevene vennenne pe la terre; Il soprannome nell'uso popolare barese; Il Natale nella musa analfabeta del popolino barese; La camenature du barese; Coline u candatore; I Laterza; Bibbia sportiva barese; Elenco prenotatori; Indice dei nomi; Ringraziamento.