WE ARE PLEASED to present the Summer 2008 edition of our web site.

Since its launch in 1985, new audiences and developments in publishing technologies have changed the ways Italica Press has offered its unique blend of the modern and the historical. These changes have also created innovative and affordable ways for readers to encounter the different worlds — both geographical and chronological — that we offer. From “desk-top” publishing of high-quality and inexpensive paperbacks, to diskette and then CD-Rom based books, to interactive PDF downloads, Italica Press has been a pioneer in the new media.

This summer Italica Press will take the next step in this blend of technology and content by offering a new publishing format for our ongoing series of the Documentary History of Naples. While both Baroque Naples and Modern Naples have long been in print in paperback, our next volume, Medieval Naples, will take a new form: a combination of open-access, online resources and downloadable chapters at very reasonable prices. When we have presented all these resources, we’ll offer a print volume for those who want it. Please have a look at our progress to date.

Also available in this format is Eileen Gardiner’s ongoing Hell-on-Line. This includes a freely accessible web site with complete discussions of hell, its literature and imagery across the religious cultures of the world and links to her downloadable editions of original descriptions of hell from each of these cultural traditions. This is a work in progress, adding and amplifying sections, and thus making optimal use of the potential of web-based publishing. It is the perfect accompaniment to her very popular and widely used Visions of Heaven & Hell Before Dante, now in its sixth printing, a best-seller by any account.

This past Spring saw the publication of an important new work: Kimberly Byrd’s Pierre Gilles’ Constantinople, a paperback edition of Pierre Gilles’ Topography of Constantinople and Its Antiquities in Four Books. It is entirely re-edited in a modern English translation, with full annotation, complete bibliography, 59 illustrations and 5 maps.

Gilles’ complete Latin text (De Topographia Constantinopoleos, et de illius Antiquitatibus Libri Quatuor), also newly edited by Byrd, is now online. It is a separate downloadable and searchable PDF file.

Byrd’s Commentary to each book of the translation will also soon be available online, also as a separate downloadable and searchable PDF file.

We are also happy to announce the publication of the first English edition of Jacob de Cessolis’ The Book of Chess since Caxton’s 1474 printing. Translated and edited by H.L. Williams, this title is now available.

Italica Press has also recently published Robert W. Berger’s new translation and edition of Guy de Maupassant’s Sicily, a fascinating travel memoir of the island, its monuments, landscape and people, by one of Europe’s foremost writers.

We last issued a print catalog about 10 years ago; but because some readers have since requested one, we have now made a complete catalog available as a downloadable PDF file. This is searchable and contains links to all our titles, both print and digital. You can now view the catalog, save it to your own hard drive, print out pages, e-mail (or mail) it to a friend.

Please see our Italica Digital Library for e-book versions of our titles.

Our Summer 2008 Home Page offers the third woodcut of our four seasons, taken from Caxton’s 1474 edition of Jacob de Cessolis’ The Book of Chess.

As always, our thanks and appreciation for your continued interest and support.