Selections From The Prison Notebooks

PREFACE

EXISTING EDITIONS

The present edition comprises a selection of texts from the Notebooks derni del carcere) written by Gramsci in prison between 1929 and (Quaderni 1935. There is still no critical edition of the Quaderni in Italian, though one is in preparation for the Istituto Gramsci in Rome. A preliminary edition containing the bulk of Gramsci’s original material, excepting translations and rejected drafts, was brought out by the Turin publisher Einaudi in six volumes between 1948 and 1951, under the editorship of Felice Platone. The same edition contains a volume of Prison Letters (Lettere dal carcere, 1947), now superseded by a more complete edition, and a series of volumes of the pre-1926 writings, from the period prior to Gramsci’s imprisonment. Our selection is based on this Einaudi edition of the Quaderni, with the addition of one or two previously unpublished

texts and with a slight rearrangement of the order in certain places. References to the Einaudi or to other selections or translations of Gramsci’s works are given in these pages as follows:

Quaderni

MS. Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce, 1948.

Int. Gli intellettuali e l’organizzazione della cultura, 1949.

Ris. Il Risorgimento, 1949.

NM. Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica e sullo Stato moderno, 1949.

LVN. Letteratura e vita nazionale, 1950.

PP. Passato e presente, 1951.

Letters

LC. Lettere dal carcere, edited by S. Caprioglio and E. Fubini, Nuovo Universale Einaudi, Turin 1965.

Other editions referred to

GF. 2000 pagine di Gramsci, edited by N. Gallo and G. Ferrata, Vol. I, “Nel tempo della lotta, 1914-1926”, Il Saggiatore, Milan 1964. On pp. 797-819 of this volume is published Gramsci’s important essay on the Southern Question (written immediately prior to his arrest): Alcuni temi della quistione meridionale, hereafter referred to as “Alcuni temi”. (Vol. II consists of letters. Two further volumes are in preparation.)