Lodovica Braida, Anonymity in Eighteenth-Century Italian Publishing. The Absent Author, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022

This book focuses on the different forms in which authorship came to be expressed in eighteenth-century Italian publishing. It analyses both the affirmation of the “author function”, and, above all, its paradoxical opposite: the use of anonymity, a centuries-old practice present everywhere in Europe but often neglected by scholarship. The reasons why authors chose to publish their works anonymously were manifold, including prudence, fear of censorship, modesty, fear of personal criticism, or simple divertissement. In many cases, it was an ethical choice, especially for ecclesiastics. The Italian case provides a key perspective on the study of anonymity in the European context, contributing to the analysis of an overlooked topic in academic studies.

The introduction focuses on the aim of the book: to analyse the development of the “author function” (defined as such by Michel Foucault in 1969)…