The book collection of Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967) - housed in the Bank of Italy's Library - is a valuable example of how an author's personal library can provide testimony. The collection (cf. the catalogue), while covering exclusively economic topics, also recounts Rossi's relationship with his books as well as with the sources of his thought. Furthermore, it retains visible and tangible traces of both his study and work methods and the difficult conditions he experienced during his long years of prison and confinement.
The volume accompanies the reader on a journey through Rossi's books and their intellectual and material vicissitudes: those that he was able to get while imprisoned or confined and those that were denied to him; the books he kept and those lost or destroyed by censorship; those he read and studied again and again with great enthusiasm and those he bitterly criticized and rejected; those he translated or planned to translate and those he wrote or tried to write. Despite the restrictions of his imprisonment and the climate of cultural autarchy that Fascism wanted to impose upon Italy, Rossi actually managed - thanks above all to Luigi Einaudi's support - to keep abreast of the developments in economic thought that were flourishing during 'the years of high theory'.
The authors he read in prison mingle with the figures of his cellmates and the men of learning and science with whom he managed to maintain a dialogue, though indirectly, thanks to the untiring efforts of Ada, his wife, and Elide, his mother. This volume sheds light on a very particular piece of the history of economic thought in Italy, but above and beyond that, on a significant chapter in Italian civil history.
