Giallo fiction
Related: 1929 - crime fiction - giallo - giallo film - hardboiled crime fiction - Italian literature - Italian exploitation culture - Italian horror - mystery fiction - pulp
'Giallo' writers: Georges Simenon - Agatha Christie - Ernesto Gastaldi - Edgar Wallace
The term giallo (which literally translates as "yellow") was originally coined to describe a series of lurid mystery/crime pulp novels printed by the Mondadori publishing company in the 1930s through the 1960s. The cheap yet enticing yellow covers promised the reader excursions into a netherworld of forgettable whodunits and page-turning thrills, much like their American counterparts of the 1920s and 1930s. The giallo novels were so popular that even established foreign mystery and crime writers, such as Agatha Christie and Cornell Woolrich, were both labeled gialli when first published in Italy. --Derek Hill, http://www.imagesjournal.com/2002/reviews/giallo/text.htm [Dec 2004]
La strana morte del signor Benson (1929) by S.S. Van Dine had been published in 1926 as The Benson Murder Case, it is the first giallo novel published
some Mondadori 'gialli' covers
Definition
The Italian term giallo (which literally translates as "yellow") was originally coined to describe a series of mystery/crime / pulp novels the Mondadori publishing company launched in 1929 and continued publishing until the 1960s.Their yellow covers contained whodunits, most often translated from their American and British counterparts of the 1920s and 1930s. Established foreign mystery and crime writers, such as Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, were both labeled gialli when first published in Italy.
When Italian authors wrote for the series they always took on English pseudonyms to sign their books.
There is an interesting parallel to be drawn with the French publishing imprint Série Noire, being both publishers that catered for the same sensationalistic market. There must be a German equivalent of this phenomenon, but I haven't been able to find it yet. [Dec 2006]
Complete bibliography
First four titles of gialli by Mondadori were translations of English novels
- La strana morte del signor Benson (1929) - S.S. Van Dine / The Benson Murder Case (1926)
- L'uomo dai due corpi (1929) - Edgar Wallace / Captains of Souls (1922)
- Il club dei suicidi (1929) - R.L. Stevenson / Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
- Il mistero delle due cugine (1929) - A.K. Green / The Leavenworth Case: a Lawyer's Story (1878)
The mystery entered Italy in the form of translations of American and especially British stories
The crime fiction genre was relatively slow to catch hold in Italy although it gradually became very popular and eventually influenced some of the country's most talented writers. As in most other countries the mystery entered Italy in the form of translations of American and especially British stories. There were, however, some very early local mystery writers including Francesco Mastriani who published The Blind Woman from Sorrento (Bietti, Milan, 1973) in serial form in 1852. Emilio De Marchi published an inverted mystery (one in which the guilty person is known at the outset) entitled The Priest's Hat in 1858 (republished in 1927 by Fratelli Treves, Milan, 1927).The genre was really begat, however, in 1929 when the publishing house Mondadori began to turn out mysteries and especially translations of U.S. and British mysteries in the "pulp" style with yellow covers. These were christened "I libri gialli" or the "yellow books". Thus "giallo" caught on as shorthand for the crime fiction genre, a term that eventually expanded to mean also thrillers and suspense and was also extended to films. Giallo (gialli, plural) became, as in most countries and especially Italy, a mass-market, popular type of literature. Gradually, indigenous writers were attracted in larger numbers to the genre. For example, Alessandro Varallo adopted an ironic tone in a number of his works (e.g. Dramma e Romanzo Poliziesco, Comoedia, 1932). Arturo Lanocita published Forty Million (Mondadori, Milan) in 1931 with comedy as the main theme. Luciano Folgore employed a surreal approach in his Colored Trap published in 1934. And, Augusto De Angelis in a series of novels (e.g. De Vincenzi e la Bruchetta di Cristallo, Sonzogno, 1974) created a serious and talented Italian police procedural set in Milan. His detective/commissioner, De Vincenzi, was a literate and clever hero who attempted to get inside the criminal's mind.
The relatively feeble beginnings of indigenous mystery writing was sharply threatened and curtailed by the Fascist government in 1941 and the genre was banned outright in 1943 as an unpatriotic in its portrayal of the state. --Joseph Eynaud via http://congress70.library.uu.nl/index.html?000004/index.html [Dec 2006]
Italian article on Mondadori
Non è possibile iniziare questa rassegna se non partendo dalla casa editrice Mondadori, la quale, con la sua celebre collana de "I Libri Gialli", ha connotato decisamente il genere in Italia (sia nell’anteguerra che nel dopoguerra). Per questo motivo fu spesso imitata, ma mai eguagliata, sia come livello degli autori, che come qualità delle storie presentate, per non dire poi dell’impeccabilità del prodotto editoriale che veniva infine fornito ai lettori. In effetti, ancora oggi qui da noi, quando si pensa a un romanzo del genere di quelli che ci interessano, si dice semplicemente giallo, tenendo ferma la denominazione che fu felicemente coniata da Arnoldo Mondadori per battezzare la serie della quale forse neanche lui stesso aveva previsto tutta la fortuna. Si deve dire però che il riferimento a questo colore per il nostro tipo di narrativa non è un’esclusiva invenzione di Mondadori, nonostante quanto si creda comunemente - e come viene riportato per esempio nel "Catalogo Storico" della casa editrice, secondo cui "il termine appartiene unicamente alla cultura italiana". Si fa al contrario esplicito riferimento a una yellow-backed novel in un racconto del volume "Le avventure di Sherlock Holmes" (e precisamente: "Il mistero della valle di Boscombe"), che fu pubblicato per la prima volta in "The Strand Magazine" negli anni 1891-1892. Ma ancora prima che da Conan Doyle, l’espressione fu usata nel poema "The Ring and the Book", dell’inglese Robert Browning, il quale, riferendosi ai particolari di un processo per omicidio avvenuto a Roma nel 1698, informa di averli appresi da un old yellow book, da lui acquistato in Italia1. Certo è però che, solo in Italia, e grazie a Mondadori, si può dire semplicemente "giallo" per far comprendere al volo di cosa si sta parlando. In altri paesi, nessuna espressione così sinteticamente azzeccata si è imposta in modo univoco per contrassegnare il genere. In quelli di lingua anglo-sassone si usa distinguere, cosa peraltro non sempre facile, tra detective, crime e mystery stories, o thrillers. Qualcosa di simile avviene in Francia, dove si parla di roman noir, criminel, o di detection, etc., anche se in quest’ultimo paese si è di recente affermata il termine polar, per indicare tutto quel genere di storie che, come i gialli, presentano un quadro della società visto dall’esterno, immediato, esatto, fedele, ma non approfondito dall’interno, e quindi non riproducibile (secondo alcuni, cioè, sarebbe proprio come avviene per l’immagine scattata da una polaroid, che non possiede un negativo dal quale si possano fare delle copie - ma è chiaro che il termine fa anche riferimento all’appellativo policier). --http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/cap1.htm [Dec 2006]
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