Description
Signed first American edition of My Autobiography by Benito Mussolini.
Octavo, xix, 318pp. Green cloth, gilt title on spine, gilt title and illustration on cover. Publication date of 1928, with the Scribner’s Seal on back panel. Complete with frontispiece portrait and 7 photographic plates. Frontispiece portrait includes the tissue cover. Faint dust along top edge of text block, solid binding, a bright, near fine example. In the publisher’s scarce first state dust jacket, $3.50 price on front flap, multiple closed tears, some loss along top edge of back panel, Japanese tissue repair to verso, a very good example.
Signed on the title page by Benito Mussolini.
Includes a letter of provenance from the Consolato Generale d’Italia, delivering this signed copy of “My Autobiography,” and thanking “E.T. Kitzenberger” from the Charles Scribner’s Company for his help in publishing the book.
This work was dictated to Richard Washburn Child and Luigi Barzini, Jr., who both served as ghostwriters on the project. This work of propaganda was aimed at an American audience, and was unpublished in Italy until 1971. The work was first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, from May-October 1928. The first edition was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1928, followed by the first English edition in 1936, based off manuscripts held at the Houghton Library at Harvard.
