Solid and living: the Italian Woolf Renaissance

‘Solid and living’ examines the renewed attention that Virginia Woolf has been enjoying in Italy since her publication rights expired in 2011, and how such attention has kept growing together with Virginia Woolf’s appeal, consolidating her as a cultural icon in Italy. The study starts with a brief introduction to the early history of the publication of Woolf in Italy, mainly thorough documents held at the historical archive of Mondadori, the publisher who owned the Italian translation rights of the writer since 1944. When the rights fist expired in 1991, a wave of re-translations appeared on the Italian marketplace, but the duration of the publication rights was soon extended to 70 years from the death of the author. Once Woolf’s works were finally on the public domain, their publication in Italy was characterized by three main paths: the retranslations of her most important novels by leading publishers (e.g., Giulio Einaudi Editore), the translations of works that had never been translated before (e.g., her Diaries), and the appearance of refined editions of her books in the catalogues of small, independent publishers (e.g., Nuova Berti, Mattioli 1885 and Racconti edizioni). All this ushered an ‘Italian Woolf Renaissance’. By means of interviews with translators and publishers of Woolf’s works, and of an analysis of their reception in the Italian cultural network through websites and social media, this chapter elucidates the reasons behind this ‘Woolf Renaissance’, and it shows the many ways in which Italians’ fascination for Woolf’s books and work is in constant growth.