La censura imperfetta. La satira di Richard Aldington nell’Italia fascista

Through the epistolary dialogue between the British author Richard Aldington and his translator Alessandra Scalero, this article sheds some light on the editorial events that led to the publication of Women must work and All men are enemies, and to the rejection of Death of a Hero and The colonel’s daughter. Considered by Luigi Rusca – Mondadori’s codirector – “particularly important”, these books, as well as their author, are now largely forgotten, even if during the Thirties Italian readers were fascinated by Aldington’s biting satire. Exponent of British Imagism, Richard Aldington was closed to the Fabian Society’s vision of the world which pervaded all his works, built around the themes of women’s emancipation and social consequences of the First World War. The “heterodoxy” of such contents made the translation activity particularly complex; the author himself was not always available to soften the tone, accepting cuts and changes.