The Secret of the Manifest Events of 1859

Tommaseo, Niccolò, 1802-1874Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5

Word count: 202K words
Chapters: 21

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Il segreto dei fatti palesi seguiti nel 1859 by Niccolò TommaseoAuthor: Tommaseo, Niccolò, 1802-1874,Language: Italian, Class: DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta, Release Date: Jan 15, 2011

Editor's review

Tommaseo was an important nineteenth-century Italian linguist and writer. This work examines the hidden side of public events in Italy around 1859 and has a strong political-pamphlet and historical-commentary character. The title points directly to "the secret of public facts," urging readers to attend to the tension between surface events and deeper motives. For those studying political opinion, intellectual positions, and historical writing during the Italian Risorgimento, the book offers a first-hand voice of the era rather than a later general history. The Project Gutenberg edition makes it easy to search names, events, and keywords, suiting thematic comparison. Note that the text is in nineteenth-century Italian, with period syntax and vocabulary, and the author's stance is pronounced; read with critical distance, as polemical historical material rather than neutral narrative.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying the Italian Risorgimento and nineteenth-century political history
Those interested in Italian political pamphlet writing and intellectual positions
Researchers with Italian reading ability doing source comparison
Advanced readers interested in historical writing and public debate

Not a good fit for

Beginners who don't read Italian and want a Chinese general history
Readers expecting systematic textbook narrative and modern annotations
Those who want only a quick event summary and won't examine the author's stance

Reading tips

Learn the Italian political background around 1859 first to reduce comprehension barriers.
Distinguish event statements from the author's judgments and note his rhetorical strategies.
Compare with other Risorgimento-era sources to observe differences in stance.
Use the electronic edition's search function to cross-check key names and events.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this a history book or a political pamphlet?

It is closer to historically framed political commentary, centered on public events of 1859, with a pronounced authorial stance. Read it as one voice in the era's debates, not a neutral general history.

Can I read it without knowing Italian?

The original is in nineteenth-century Italian, and the Project Gutenberg edition has no Chinese translation. Readers with no Italian face a high barrier; basic Italian or translation tools are recommended.

What background should I know before reading?

It helps to grasp the basic political situation in Italy around 1859 and the intellectual debates of Tommaseo's time. With that background, the text's references and positions are easier to follow.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Tommaseo, Niccolò, 1802-1874 Author · Italian · 1802–1874

Niccolò Tommaseo (1802–1874) was an Italian writer and linguist who took part in the Italian Risorgimento. His literary work went hand in hand with his study of language: he cared about social realities and about the practical use of Italian. Two of his works are held in this collection, Il segreto dei fatti palesi seguiti nel 1859 and Il duca d'Atene. The first explores the hidden side of public events of 1859 and shows a strong concern with current affairs; the second, centered on the Duke of Athens, is a narrative work on a historical subject. Though different in topic, both reveal his tendency to connect literary writing with real and historical issues. Given the limited sources, details of his life and the full range of his work are not widely documented; this note is based only on the works held here and his known identity.