A Library Collections Enhancement Award has been granted to the project “Critical Editions/Addition for the French and Italian Collections, 12th to 20th centuries,” July 1 2022-June 30, 2023

This Library Collections Enhancement project will enhance access for UW-Madison researchers in the humanities and social sciences to recent critical reeditions of important primary works by major French and Italian authors from the Early Modern period to the twentieth century, currently not owned by the UW-Madison Libraries. By focusing on multi-volume editions of canonical authors such as Jean Bodin, Marguerite de Navarre, Agrippa d’Aubigné, Montesquieu, Denis Diderot, and Jacques Derrida–along with important critical reeditions of writers including Louise Labé, Charles Sorel, l’abbé Raynal, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and the Marquis d’Argens—the project is designed to provide scholars and students at UW-Madison with fundamental tools for research and learning.  The grant will also deepen and update the Libraries’ existing collections by enabling the purchase of important secondary works in subfields of French studies.

Support for this collection will be provided by the University of Wisconsin – Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Principal investigator: Professor Anne Vila 

Co-PI: Laura Martin (Ibero-American Studies and Romance Languages Librarian)

Co-investigators: Professors Martine Debaisieux, Ernesto Livorni, Jan Miernowski; graduate students Andrea Quaini and Alex Taylor

This project builds up the 2020-21LCEI grant that allowed for acquisition of a copy of the 1578 Venice edition of Dante con l’Espositioni di Cristoforo Landino et d’Alessandro Vellutello sopra la sua Comedia dell’Inferno, del Purgatorio, & del Paradiso, and the purchase of a new collection of 240 contemporary French-language comics and graphic novels. For more information on that project, see

https://research.wisc.edu/funding/library-collections-enhancement/an-enrichment-plan-for-french-and-italian-language-library-collections-some-key-acquisitions/