The first publication of the Operette was partial: presented by Pietro Pietro Giordani, there appeared in Vieusseux’s “Antologia” in January 1826 Timandro, Colombo and Tasso (the same Operette appeared in the “Nuovo Ricoglitore” in March-April 1826, and then as an “extract” from the “Ricoglitore”).

The first version published as a book was dated 1827 (by Stella of Milan), and included the twenty texts of 1824 with two modifications with regard to the order of composition, already established in the Index attached to the manuscript: Natura e Islandese, “negative” masterpiece, was moved to after the Tasso, and the Timandro, “apologia dell’opera contro i filosofi moderni”, was put last.

The second edition, “with many additions and corrections by the author”, is dated 1834 (published by Piatti of Florence), and Leopardi also added, at the very end, the Dialogo di un venditore d’almanacchi e di un passeggere and Dialogo di Tristano e di un amico, both of 1832.

in 1835, with Starita in Naples, in the planned edition of Leopardi’s Opere in six volumes (the first was the Canti), he drew up a new version (entitled Prose), “corrected, amplified and all approved by the author”: only the first of the two volumes foreseen did actually go to press (from the Storia del genere umano to Parini), because the second was blocked for reasons of censorship. We do however know how the book should have been thanks to the Notizia intorno a queste Operette in the first volume: Leopardi planned to add Frammento apocrifo di Stratone da Lampsaco (1825), Il Copernico (1827) and Dialogo di Plotino e di Porfirio (1827), and wanted to leave out Dialogo di un lettore di umanità e di Sallustio.

This final layout, for a total of twenty four Operettas, was to see the light only in the posthumous edition of the Opere overseen by Antonio Ranieri in 1845 and published by Le Monnier of Florence.

In 1850 the Operette were added to the Index of forbidden books.

The final edition was overseen by Ottavio Besomi (Fondazione Mondadori, Milan 1979).