Centro Manoscritti

The Centro per gli studi sulla tradizione manoscritta di autori moderni e contemporanei was established in 1969 and is based at the University of Pavia. The centre hosts one of the largest collections of manuscripts of twentieth-century Italian authors, among these the papers and correspondence of Nobel Laureates Grazia Deledda and Eugenio Montale, and best-selling author Umberto Eco. The centre also holds documents related to Roman Jakobson, Samuel Beckett, and Valéry Larbaud. It houses a substantial collection of epistolary exchanges, and considerable documentation on a number of Italian publishing houses, twentieth-century Italian literary magazines and cultural institutions.

Maria Antonietta Grignani

Maria Antonietta Grignani is Professor of Italian Linguistics and the History of Italian Language and has directed the Centro per gli studi sulla tradizione manoscritta di autori moderni e contemporanei at the University of Pavia since her arrival in 2007.  Under her leadership the Centre has further strengthened its national pre-eminent position as the main archive for Italian twentieth-century authors by acquiring several high-profile collections. Professor Grignani has taught at several prestigious universities in Italy, as well as holding positions of ‘Visiting Professor’ at both the University of Geneva and Christ Church College at Oxford. Her research interests lie mainly in fifteenth-century humanist culture and modern Italian literature and she has published widely on a vast array of authors and cultural issues related to these periods. Prof Grignani has curated several exhibitions of twentieth-century autograph and manuscript materials, most notably an exhibition of first editions, autograph materials and manuscripts of Montale’s poetry (Siena 1996) and an exhibition of the notebooks and manuscripts of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s posthumous novel Petrolio (Pavia 1999).

Full details on Prof Grignani’s publication records.