La biblioteca di una filantropa Libri e letture di Stéphanie Omboni (1839-1917)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to deepen the complex personality of Stéphanie Etzerodt Omboni (1839-1917), the Anglo-Belgian philanthropist and activist for women’s rights who lived in Padua in the second half of the nineteenth century by considering which readings were at the basis of her cultural, human, and spiritual formation, with a special account on the books or authors marked her philanthropic work or nourished her intellect or her curiosity, which kind of literary genres could be found in her library, in which languages, their quality, and their extent. The sources for this research are the correspondence between Stéphanie Omboni and some of the most preeminent personalities of her time (particularly with the anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza, the feminist and writer Sibilla Aleramo and the philosopher Gaetano Meale) and the remains of her family library, a partial book collection that constituted the much larger personal library of the Omboni couple, currently kept at the Museum of the Education of the University of Padua.