The Adventures of Pinocchio

New York: Macmillan Company, 1929. First American Edition, Third Printing. Near fine. Attilio Mussino. 4to. 11 1/4 x 8 in. (285 x 201 mm); pp [14] + 299 + [7]; frontispiece portrait of the author, pictorial title, 50 full-page color plates and illustrations on almost every page in full color, tritone, duotone and black-and-white, after the originals by Attilio Mussino. Pictorial end papers, lightly toned; text pages in excellent condition. Publisher's original blue cloth covered boards, with the figure of Pinocchio printed in red, green and black on the front cover, and the title printed in red along the spine, in near fine condition; green cloth chemise lightly bumped on edges and corners; contemporary outer slipcase (12 x 9 in, 303 x 225 mm) with leather spine, 5 raised bands, gilt decorations, fillets, and title; slipcase slightly rubbed.
Published by Macmillan New York but printed in Florence (Italy), as per inscription on half-title verso and colophon, by R. Bemporad & Son. This is the third printing of the Macmillan edition in English. The first Italian version with Mussino's strong color illustrations was originally published in 1911. A substantial and beautifully illustrated edition of this children's classic which inspired Disney to create one of his best animated features in 1940.
Carlo Lorenzini (1826 - 1890) was a prolific journalist, playwright and novelist who adopted Collodi as his pen-name from the name of his childhood village in Tuscany. He was an adherent of the Risorgimento movement which achieved the unification of Italy in 1860 and he became involved in the administration and especially education in the region of Florence. In this capacity he was involved in translating and writing didactic works for the youth of the "New Italy." He launched a weekly magazine for children in 1881, in which he began weekly installments of "The Story of a Puppet". When he ended the story abruptly with the lynching of the protagonist Pinocchio, his readers protested, so the puppet was brought him back to life through the intercession of the Blue Fairy, and became the subject of further installments, published over the course of almost a year (1882-83) and collected under the tilte of "The Adventures of Pinocchio."
«Collodi's picaresque tale proceeds through fortuitous episodes, demonstrating his awareness of the historic force of "fable," a continuous narrative momentum, and inimitable glints of sociopolitical irony.» ... «Pinocchio was drafted in the Fascist cause, metamorphosing from a greedy, ungrateful, lazy puppet, into a model young citizen of Mussolini's Italy. Similarly, the Disney animated masterpiece of 1940 with songs by Leigh Hairline has been accused of having corrupted the literary classic even as it brought the character to a much wider audience.» (from The Grolier Club, One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature, 46)

Attilio Mussino (1878 - 1954) was an Italian painter and cartoonist, trained at the celebrated Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. During World War I, Mussino was a soldier who used his artistic skills to draw scenes of the French battlefields and everyday activities of military operations. Mussino illustrated numerous children's books, including the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, but is best known for designing the illustrations for the first color edition of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio in 1911. .