Publications

About the library

Casa Manzoni is located in Via Morone 1, Milan, Italy. Home to the Centro Nazionale di Studi Manzoniani, it houses a library of approximately 38,000 volumes, as shown by the inventory.

In his will dated 13 August 1867, Manzoni provided that ‘all those books that are to his liking and especially those bearing annotations’ should go to his son Pietro. As the latter passed away a few weeks before his father, the will remained unaltered. It was therefore agreed that the library should be split between Pietro’s four children. Three of these donated their share to Pietro Brambilla, the husband of their sister Vittoria. In 1886 Brambilla offered the collection to the Braidense Library, on condition that within the library, ‘a special room should be set aside to the memory of Alessandro Manzoni, to house all his manuscripts and everything else that could be considered useful to ilustrate his life, thoughts and times’.

The books that made up Alessandro Manzoni’s personal library are currently divided into three separate collections stored in different locations:

• the Fondo Alessandro Manzoni, kept in the house at Via Morone. This collection includes the 3,093 volumes which belonged to Manzoni (36 from the sixteenth century, 78 from the seventeenth century, and 729 from the eighteenth century), first editions of Manzoni’s works, and various books bearing his own handwritten annotations.
• the Fondo Manzoni, kept in the Braidense National Library. This comprises 550 volumes which were originally part of Manzoni’s personal library, 200 of which annotated by Manzoni.
• the Fondo Manzoni, kept at the villa at Brusuglio. This includes a total of 1,554 volumes (four of which from the sixteenth century, plus printed editions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries).