Faulkner Vincit Omnia: The Doing and Undoing of the Mondadori Edition of William Faulkner’s Collected Works

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on an under-researched aspect of William Faulkner’s Italian publishing history, the publication of his collected works – the Opera Omnia – conceived by the author himself and Fernanda Pivano, his Italian editor at Mondadori, in 1955. By 1966, after a decade of intense editorial efforts, only four of the ten planned volumes had been published, and the project was abandoned. Based on extensive archival research carried out at the Mondadori Foundation, this article will demonstrate how the Opera Omnia publishing debacle was caused by several failures, including the publisher’s difficulty in keeping pace with the translation of a writer with such a complex style as Faulkner, and the growing tensions between Mondadori’s managing editors and Pivano, a highly competent and uncompromising editor.