Manzoni as publisher

Death in the family had prevented Manzoni from carrying out the planned republication of his novel, with a text linguistically revised on the basis of Florentine usage. His second marriage (to a woman who was particularly attentive to his literary fame) provided a period of relative family peace that helped him to attend to the project. The first novelty was the fact that Manzoni himself was the publisher, supported by his wife and his friend Grossi, who predicted (wrongly, as it turned out) that the sales of the book would bring substantial profits. The second novelty was that Manzoni decided to publish the Promessi Sposi as an illustrated edition. Manzoni thought that this would put a stop to the widespread problem of book piracy, namely the unauthorized reproductions (of the 1827 Ferrario edition) that the Milanese publishers, pressured by public demand, had carried out in Lombardy and, since there was no copyright legislation, nonchalantly sold alongside legal copies of the book. As Manzoni explained in detail in a letter to Giacomo Beccaria, his mother’s cousin, the illustrated edition of his novel together with sale by instalment aimed at preventing illegal reproduction, since no illegal printer had the technical expertise or time to forge the original. Manzoni may have first thought of the problem of unauthorized printing and the methods for dealing with it after speaking with Honoré de Balzac, who visited him in March 1837 and was himself engrossed in defending authors’ rights, setting up the first association of authors in 1838. Manzoni’s plan had thus been thought out in detail. First he considered having his work illustrated by Francesco Hayez, but Hayez declined the invitation, after which Manzoni turned to the French painter Boulanger. In the end, a young painter from Turin named Francesco Gonin was chosen. Manzoni then finalized contractual matters with the Milanese engraver, Giuseppe Sacchi (who had French and English engravers working with him), and with the printers Guglielmini and Redaelli of Milan.