94 Donna Clara (pseud. di Lidia Morelli)
Dalla Cucina al Salotto: Enciclopedia della Vita Domestica. Nuova edizione riveduta e ampliata... Nuova ristampa Dal 41° al 50° migliaio
Torino-Genova, S. Lattes & c. - Editori, 1927
(175x125 mm). PagesVIII, 719, [3]. With 70 illustrations in text. Contemporary half-cloth binding.
The 1927 reprint of the classic by Lidia Morelli, published for the first time in 1905. The edition is characterized by L'Ennesima Prefazione in the post-war version, which focuses on the savings needed to cope with the difficult economic conditions in Italy: 'Since the last time I put this book before your eyes, my dear readers, how much water has passed under the bridges, and how much blood has reddened that water! The war was not only the terrible element that forced the material rebuilding of so many destroyed things; but its breath penetrated from everywhere where life, hearth, customs, traditions were; it has upset and profoundly changed everything, to the point where the most tenacious, unchanged secular roots opposed. And so my poor old book also demands for a change... My hair stands to leaf through it the way it was; to see how many eggs I suggested you to put in a cake, how many frivolities to listen to, how much time to waste breeding a dog or a parrot... Now it seems to me that each one of my already faithful readers is shaking her shoulders a little disdainful, and impatiently is leafing through the old pages to look for something else. That 'something else' is what the war has put inside us: a forced but sensible sense of economy, a quick and judicious use of time, a preference for profitable occupations, a new seriousness. And in the depths of each one, the anguished memory of past misfortunes, the alternation of sorrows and hopes that for so long made us axious, but tempered our souls; all, in short, a set of deeper and more noble feelings than those which our hearts used to beat selfishly for.
Quite different from the preface, carefree and optimistic of any pre-war edition. Let's compare it for example with the Preface to the 1906 edition (see next book).
