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Conference : National literary fields and European space

The literary agent Erich Linder: creation, definition and legitimization of a new profession in Italian publishing after World War II

Author/s : Giorgio Alberti

Erich Linder was Italy’s primary literary agent from the time of the Second World War until his death, in 1983; for forty years, he thus played a major role in the importation of French and Anglo-American authors. In the postwar Italian political and cultural context - when intellectual engagement and cultural research were finally encouraged after being marginalized and ostracized by fascist politics - Linder introduced a role then absent from Italian publishing through establishing privileged links with American university presses and other publishers involved in academic production. Through his work, Linder contributed to defining the functions of the literary agent in Italy. He dedicated his attention to the negotiation and the defense of the rights of the author, to the placement of books, to their material production, to the improvement of the distribution system, and to the extension of the publishing market. With a constant eye to the functional modes and the evolution of foreign book production, he delineated and adapted his strategies to the Italian national publishing field. Linder played a central role in the birth and development of “il Saggiatore”, the publishing house founded by Alberto Mondadori (son of Arnoldo, founder of the Mondadori press), with the intention of dealing primarily with work in philosophy and the social sciences. As the epistolary relationship (documented and now open to public access) between these two demonstrates, Linder promoted a rational approach to publishing. He often corrected Mondadori’s penchant for the grandiose and functioned as a dependable middleman between the publisher and his authors, occasionally, however leaving himself open to misunderstandings which necessitated further mediation. Linder progressively mastered academic as well as literary production. The fact that Calvino asked for Linder’s professional help is quite significant, since as an editor at Einaudi, Calvino exercised the role of publisher of his own and others’ works. Though his knowledge of both the literary and publishing spheres crossed over national boundaries, Calvino appealed to Linder at crucial steps of his career: first, when he began to publish in the American literary marketplace – the complexity of which demanded specific technical skills – and then during his long Parisian sojourn, during which Linder handled Calvino’s publications in Italy. Linder’s innovative work served to both stabilize and render indispensible the role of the literary agent in the Italian publishing world.

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