by Antonio Gramsci
First American edition
New York: International Publishers, 1971. First American edition, first printing; published simultaneously in Britain. xcvi, 483 pp. Bound in publisher's red cloth stamped in gilt on spine. Very Good+, bumped corners, occasional light pencil underlining. Labor historian Michael Torigian's copy with his name to front free endpaper. In a Very Good unclipped dust jacket, worn, tape repair to verso.
The Italian politician and intellectual Antonio Gramsci was arrested in 1926 after Benito Mussolini banned all political parties. The incarcerated Communist leader filled more than 30 notebooks with essays on history, philosophy, and political theory, which were smuggled out and sent to Moscow for safekeeping. Gramsci was released from prison on the grounds of ill health in 1935, but his notebooks didn't make it back to Italy until he had died and his country had been defeated in the Second World War. The essays were first published in Italy in 1947, but it was this 1971 English translation that brought Gramsci's groundbreaking work to the world's notice.