Scrittori d'Italia Laterza

[1] The Scrittori d'Italia book collection was born in 1910 from an idea of the not yet thirty-years-old Giovanni Laterza, who wanted to develop family cartolier[clarification needed] activity as a "publisher of works that really serve to improve culture in general"[2] on the model of the Barbera publishing house, magnifying the original activity of stationery and bookshop of his family, and at the same time destroying what had been the tradition of literary historiography to that day.

[4] The book collection was announced on 10 March 1910 with a telegraphic communication by Giovanni Laterza to Benedetto Croce "Starting today the composition of the Italian Authors's series, I turn my thinking to you, that wanted it to be edited by me.

Foresight, dedication and organizational rigor by Laterza and Croce offered to the Italian public, a few months later, editions of works such as the Military Science by Luigi Blanch and the poems of Iacopo Vittorelli.

In fact, in the thirties and forties were published, for example, the Dialoghi d'Amore by the Jewish author Leone Ebreo (subsequently seized on 28 December 1939), the Poems by Giuseppe Parini and the History of the Tridentine Council.

The Second World War and the death of Giovanni Laterza on 21 August 1943 marked the stop of publications for the next three years, that only restarted in 1947 with Andrea da Barberino and his book Reali di Francia.