Mondadori as a Publisher of Scandinavian Literature, 1932-1945

This article examines how Scandinavian literature – literature written in one of the three Scandinavian languages – was selected for Italian translation by Arnoldo Mondadori, one of Italy's most important publishing houses, from 1932 to 1945. The sources for this enquiry are the reader’s reports stored in the Arnoldo Mondadori Editore Historical Archive held by the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation in Milan (FAAM). The author has identified 122 reports related to Scandinavian literature and listed them in Appendix A. On the basis of this list, the author asks the following three-part question: When were the reader's reports produced, who wrote them and what were the reports about? The last of these questions is concerned with exploring whether the reports were about the ultimate source texts or some mediating texts (i.e. translations). The author also hypothesizes possible reasons behind the chronological distribution of the reports and considers why the main individuals involved in the process of selecting Scandinavian literature changed in the 1940s. She furthermore discusses why in multiple cases Mondadori relied on German translations when choosing Scandinavian literature for Italian translation.