Resources

Local and national

The Leopardi Centre has dedicated study space on the third floor of the Ashley Building, within the Department of Modern Languages (R17 on the Campus Map). 

It has a growing library of publications relating to Leopardi and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which complement the extensive holdings in the University’s Main Library. 

The Centre also stores important relevant CD-ROMs, including Letteratura Italiana Zanichelli (LIZ), Tutte le opere (Lexis) and the recent fully searchable critical edition of the Zibaldone, including a page-by-page facsimile of the manuscript, edited by Ceragioli and Ballerini.

The University’s Special Collections, which move to new purpose-built premises in autumn 2010, possess a number of first, early and rare editions relating to Leopardi, including a precious signed copy of the 1831 edition of the Canti (the first edition of Leopardi’s poems to bear what will become the canonical title).

A copy of the entire run of Antologia on microfiche, and one of the country’s largest collections of Baskerville and Bodoni imprints of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, are also some of the Main Library’s most valued possessions. For certain research topics, the Leopardi Centre and Main Library holdings can be supplemented by those of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Further afield, both the main relevant libraries of the University of Oxford (the Bodleian and the Taylorian Institute) and the British Library and other London libraries are within easy reach; inter-library loan arrangements are in place.

International

The Leopardi Centre maintains close research links with Italian and other European research centres, principally (at present) the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani (CNSL - Recanati), the Centro Romantico of the Gabinetto Vieusseux (Florence), the Centro Nazionale Studi Manzoniani (Milan), the Laboratorio Leopardi and Italian and comparative literature departments in the Universities of Barcelona, Berlin (Freie Universität), Bologna, Florence, Fribourg, Rome, Siena, Turin and Zurich.

The CNSL hosts a specialised library, where it is possible to find all the nineteenth and twentieth century editions of Leopardi, microfilms of the manuscripts, and a very large proportion of all the books and journal articles written on Leopardi over the past two centuries. Researchers affiliated to the Leopardi Centre at Birmingham have privileged access to the CNSL library and accommodation (foresteria). 

The website www.leopardi.it connects not only to the CNSL, but also to the other Leopardi Centres in Italy and Argentina, Casa Leopardi in Recanati (where the Leopardi family library remains intact and can be consulted), the Rivista di Studi Leopardiani (now the official organ of the CNSL), the Marsilio series of Testi e Studi Leopardiani, the Centro Mondiale della Poesia Giacomo Leopardi, and many others. It also carries events and news related to Leopardi and Leopardi studies, and full-text copies of all of Leopardi’s principal works.