Great and Terrible World, A: The Pre-Prison Letters 1908-1926 Antonio Gramsci

This edition of letters by Antonio Gramsci vividly evokes the ‘great and terrible world’ in which he lived (a description he used a number of times in his correspondence). The letters show Gramsci beginning to form the theoretical concepts that come to fuller fruition in the Prison Notebooks, but they also give an essential and rounded picture of Gramsci’s development - politically, intellectually and emotionally. Broadly speaking, the letters are of three types: early letters to Gramsci’s family; overtly political letters from Turin, Moscow, Vienna, and Rome; and letters to the Schucht sisters, including Jul’ka, whom he married while in Moscow. The political letters constitute a fascinating insight into the period, both with regard to the Communist International and, more often, to Italian politics. The letters to his wife give a poignant insight into his emotional life. The volume also includes the famous letter of 1926 in which Gramsci, writing in the name of the Italian Party’s Political Bureau, criticises the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party for their handling of internal opposition. There are approximately 200 letters in this volume, including some that have been recently discovered and published for the first time in this volume. The collection begins with the letters that the young Gramsci sent back to his family when he was a student in Cagliari and ends with the last letter he wrote before his arrest in 1926.