Gerbi Collection: European Literatures

Antonello Gerbi was born in 1914 in Florence into a Jewish bourgeois family but moved to Milan at an early age. After earning a law degree, he embarked on a career in journalism, providing travel reports from Germany, England, France, and Hungary for the Genoa-based newspaper “Il Lavoro,” often accompanied by photographs of the places he visited. Photography remained a lifelong passion, while his journalistic career ended in 1932 when he joined Banca Commerciale Italiana as head of the Research Department. In 1938, following the enactment of racial laws, Gerbi was sent by Raffaele Mattioli to Peru, where he took charge of the Research Department at Banco Italiano de Lima. While in Peru, he had the opportunity to pursue historical and philosophical research with the aim of writing a volume on the country’s history and contemporary reality. This scholarly endeavour sparked his passion for American studies, particularly in reconstructing European perspectives on the New World. His research culminated in the publication of the seminal work La disputa del nuovo mondo. Storia di una polemica, 1750-1900 (Ricciardi, 1955), which was later translated into Spanish and English. This was followed by La natura delle Indie Nuove. Da Cristoforo Colombo a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (Ricciardi, 1975). Returning to Milan in 1948, Gerbi played a pivotal role in revitalising the Ricciardi publishing house while continuing his work at the Research Department of Banca Commerciale Italiana until 1970. He passed away on 26 July 1976.

A substantial portion of Gerbi’s extensive personal library was donated to the University of Milan in 2011. The collection was distributed among various university departments based on subject matter: the APICE Centre (approximately 5,000 volumes), the Department of Historical Sciences and Documentation (2,466 volumes), the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures (1,596 volumes), and the Department of Art, Music, and Performing Arts History (1,308 volumes).

The collection housed within the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures reflects Gerbi’s broad scholarly interests in foreign literatures. It includes primary sources, first editions, and critical texts on Spanish and Spanish-American, French, English, German, and Russian literature. To facilitate cataloguing, the literary volumes were divided into five sections: 

• 11L.A.FAG. (English Studies): Comprising 356 monographs, including 19 rare books and 25 from the 19th century. A significant portion of this section consists of works published between the 1940s and 1960s, though numerous titles date back to the early 20th century. The collection features books from a variety of sources, primarily the United Kingdom and the United States, but also Germany and France. Many volumes were published by specialised presses such as the London-based Chatto & Windus, Dent, and Penguin, as well as by prestigious university presses, including Cambridge University Press (CUP) in the United Kingdom and Columbia, Harvard, and Cornell University Presses in the United States. The content spans different periods and genres of English and American literary history from the 18th century onwards, with a notable presence of 18th-century dramatic texts—reflecting Gerbi’s keen interest in theatre.
• 11L.D.FAG. (German Studies): This section contains 318 monographs, including three rare books and 54 from the 19th century. While predominantly featuring publications from the 1940s to 1960s, the collection also includes works from the early 20th century and some from the 1980s. German and Austrian publications dominate, but there is also a notable presence of Italian-language critical studies, particularly among the more recent titles. The thematic breadth covers various literary periods and genres.
• 12L.F.FAG. (French Studies): Reflecting Gerbi’s strong interest in French literature, this is the most extensive section, comprising 1,096 monographs, including 282 from the 19th century and nine rare books. Among these are three bibliographical treasures from the late 18th century: the third volume of Oeuvres diverses de M. de Fontenelle, de l’Academie francoise (Paris, Michel Brunet, Grand’ Salle du Palais, au Mercure Galant, 1724), Vue sur les sensations by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Milan, Joseph Marelli, 1773), and L’homme de désir, Par l’auteur des erreurs et de la vérité, written by the Freemason Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (Lyon, J. Sulpice Grabit, 1790). The chronological distribution of the volumes is consistent with the other sections, but this collection features a notable number of books published in Italy and in Italian, including critical studies and translations of primary sources. The content spans a wide range of periods and genres in French literary history.
• 12L.I.FAG. (Iberian Studies): A relatively small literary section, containing 94 monographs, including 20 from the 19th century. The collection follows the same chronological and geographical distribution as the other sections, with some noteworthy first Italian translations of major Spanish authors, such as the lesser-known Sfinge senza Edipo by Miguel de Unamuno (first Italian translation by Piero Pillepich, preface by Adriano Tilgher, Milan, Corbaccio, 1925). Another highlight is the first edition of Italia e Spagna, a seminal work—obra cumbre—for the study of Italian-Spanish cultural relations by the eminent literary critic and Germanist Arturo Farinelli (1867-1948), published in Turin by Bocca in 1929. As with the other sections, the contents span various literary periods and genres.
• 13L.FAG. (Slavic Studies): The most modest section, comprising 60 20th-century monographs. Notably, this section does not contain works in Russian or any other Slavic language; instead, it primarily features Italian-language editions and numerous French translations of major Russian authors such as Tolstoy and Chekhov.