‘Neither Fish nor Fowl’? The Correspondence of Lorenzo Valerio, 1825–1849

Abstract

Lorenzo Valerio (1810–1865), though a key figure in Piedmontese and Italian politics, a newspaper editor of note and a leading light of both the Associazione Agraria and the Associazione Italo-Slava, has not been accorded in recent years the attention he merits. With the publication, however, of the first four volumes of his correspondence, it is now possible to map more precisely Valerio's activities and influence, in Risorgimento Italy and far beyond it. These letters provide their principal editor, Adriano Viarengo, with the opportunity to review a number of crucial historiographical questions in Risorgimento scholarship, among them, the nature of moderate hegemony, the political vision of the Sinistra subalpina, and the complex relations between Italian patriots and Slav Romantic nationalists active within the Austrian Empire. This article is designed both to portray Valerio and his world, and to reflect upon the contribution Viarengo has made, whether in his introductions to the correspondence or in his ancillary essays, to the study of the Risorgimento.‘… a good enough sort, but neither fish nor fowl …’ Giuseppe Mazzini [Letter, 6 March 1851, to his mother]