''Oberdan'' is a book by Italian author and historian Francesco Salata, published in 1932 by

Mondadori Arnoldo Mondadori Editore () is the biggest publishing company in Italy. History The company was founded in 1907 in Ostiglia by 18-year-old Arnoldo Mondadori who began his publishing career with the publication of the magazine ''Luce!''. In 19 ...

. The book is a reduced edition of Salata's 1924 ''Guglielmo Oberdan secondo gli atti segreti del processo: carteggi diplomatici e altri documenti inediti''. The book was acclaimed upon its release.

Overview

The work is a biographical essay on

Guglielmo Oberdan Guglielmo Oberdan (February 1, 1858 – December 20, 1882) was an Italian irredentist. He was executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, becoming a martyr of the Italian unification movement. Biography He w ...

, and it contains previously unpublished documents about the Italian patriot, with documents of the trial recovered by Salata. It is a "leaner" edition of Salata's ''Guglielmo Oberdan secondo gli atti segreti del processo: carteggi diplomatici e altri documenti inediti'', published on 1 January 1924 by

Zanichelli Zanichelli editore S.p.A. is an Italian publishing company founded in Modena, Italy, in 1859. It publishes mainly textbooks for school, university and professional books (legal texts and medicine), dictionaries, and reference books. History The ...

. The 1924 edition contains all the documents on which the study was based, as well as Salata's notes, while the 1932 edition is more "popular", and contains just the literary text of the work. Further, the 1932 edition was sold at a reduced price four times inferior to the original edition's, to make the book more accessible to the wide public. In the book, Salata argues "with arguments that are not very persuasive" that Oberdan (whose mother was Slovenian and father Italian) was a full-blooded Italian because even his mother's family had been Italian for many generations, and that it is unknown whether his ancestors were Slovenian or German. The book is still extensive and well documented, a "ponderous" work considered fundamental among those written on Oberdan. The 606-page book published with Zanichelli in 1924 was acclaimed upon its release, and, as mentioned, in 1932 it was republished in a "leaner" edition by

. Billed as an essay, the work is much biographical in nature.

References

Italian books 1932 essays Biographical books Arnoldo Mondadori Editore books 1932 books {{Italy-book-stub