Le prime traduzioni inglesi dell’opera di Svevo: nuove considerazioni alla luce delle carte d’archivio

This contribution explores the first translations of Italo Svevo’s oeuvre appeared in the UK and in the USA between 1929 and 1932; it does so by focusing on the unpublished letters exchanged between Svevo’s widow, Livia Veneziani, and both the English editors and the translator Beryl de Zoete. In the first section the paper focuses on the Anglophone editions of Svevo, and traces both their genesis and their fortune. The next section, by examining the correspondence between the editors, de Zoete, and Veneziani, sheds light on their mutual discussions about the ongoing translation of Svevo; it also analyses a number of translation and editorial choices made by de Zoete that are relevant to our understanding of how Svevo’s works were first received in the Anglophone context. Finally, the paper considers both the reviews and the articles kept in the so-called ‘quadernacci’ which provide further valuable evidence as to the English and American reception of Svevo in the early Thirties.