Edited by Silvia Valisa (Florida State University) and Morena Corradi (Queens College and City University of New York), this volume explores various figures and aspects of nineteenth-century journalism. Its nine original contributions show the great influence that gazettes, newspapers and magazines had in pre- and post-unification Italy. Written by historians, Italianists and musicologists, the essays cover the entire century, giving space to prominent players and lesser-known figures, as well as to a wide range of periodicals and specific columns. Investigating Italian journalism in a period of strong growth in readership and changing reading practices, the contributions clearly portray the many roles the newspapers played (intellectually, culturally, socially, structurally and politically).

The volume, divided into two sections organised chronologically, opens with a contribution by Loredana Palma dedicated to the little-known figure of Vincenzo Torelli (1807–84), the Neapolitan journalist and playwright and editor of L'Omnibus. Illustrating that Naples was a particularly lively capital, Palma disproves the stereotype that the cultural scene of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was not very dynamic. Women's and humour magazines, such as the Corriere delle dame or L'Uomo di Pietra, are at the centre of Patrizia Landi's contribution on the emergence of a new reading public whose loyalty was secured, among other things, through entertainment inserts such as feuilletons. Massimo Castellozzi also focuses on a humour magazine, La Frusta, edited by Antonio Piccozzi (1824–93), an innovative and original example of anti-monarchical and anti-clerical political criticism through satire. Morena Corradi, by contrast, investigates two ‘rival’ figures of Italian journalism, Achille Bizzoni (1841–1903) and Leone Fortis (1824–96), editors of Gazzettino rosa and Pungolo, respectively. Their clashes provide Corradi with an opportunity to reflect more broadly on the profession of journalism and the role of the press in the post-unification context, especially in relation to the process of nation-building.

The second part of the volume offers studies that are based on specific periodicals, thus highlighting how the nineteenth century witnessed a specialisation of the medium. With an innovative focus, Bianca Maria Antolini and Alessandra Palidda, analysing in their essays, respectively, the Giornale della Società del Quartetto di Milano and Il Teatro illustrato, explore music journalism and show how these periodicals contributed to the cultural education of Italians and stimulated creative initiatives. Maurizio Punzo’ s article, based on the examination of the socialist journal Critica Sociale, created by Filippo Turati (1857–1932), discusses the strong political tensions that characterised the second half of the century, at the same time emphasising the modernity of Turati's initiative: his periodical included not only social and political criticism but also entailed cultural and intellectual confrontation. The bi-monthly column ‘Bilancio del XIX secolo’ published in the pacifist periodical La Vita Internazionale, edited by the Nobel Prize winner Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1833–1918), is the starting point from which Sara Boethius enquires into how journalists and intellectuals retrospectively discussed scientific and technological developments, as well as the social and political changes of an increasingly ‘fast-paced’ and ‘modern’ century, and, at the same time, projected their expectations and fears onto the newborn twentieth century.

The periodical press constitutes a very valuable source for developing interdisciplinary and intermedial analytical approaches. Nineteenth-century journals are, unfortunately, fragile sources. They are easily destroyed or lost, so they need to be safeguarded by means of digitalisation projects, which is the focus of the concluding essay by Silvia Valisa. Taking her lead from the digitalisation project that she directs of one of the greatest Italian periodicals of the nineteenth century, Il Secolo, founded by Edoardo Sonzogno (1836–1920), and from European projects (e.g., the Gallica Digital Library), Valisa critically reflects on how to exploit digital humanities to give new visibility to nineteenth-century periodicals and thus new impetus to such research in general.

In addition to offering in-depth analyses based on primary sources of various kinds, including unpublished private letters, the volume contains valuable research tools. Of particular interest is the list of the main Italian digital repositories and the index of nineteenth-century Italian periodicals available on the web (updated to March 2021).

In a more general way, the volume illustrates the importance of pursuing the study of the periodical press through the methodology developed by Periodical Studies, a new disciplinary field that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century in Europe and in North America, which considers journals not only as ‘containers’ of information but also as autonomous objects of inquiry. This is certainly an appropriate methodology because large areas remain to be explored, especially in relation to new disciplinary topics and geographical areas that have received less attention from scholars. This is evident in this volume as well, in which, with the exception of the initial essay, the research is concentrated mainly on Northern Italy and, in particular, on Milan, a city that was then becoming the cultural and editorial capital of the Peninsula. Perhaps, thanks to digitalisation projects on a national scale, new archives will emerge that will open the research towards new geographical horizons for investigating transnational perspectives and networks.

Editors Valisa and Corradi chose the contributions skilfully; they brilliantly contextualise them in their lucid introduction. In sum, the volume makes clear that the study of the periodical press is essential to understanding the cultural history of the nineteenth century, a century of epochal changes narrated day after day in newspapers and gazettes. La carta veloce is a pleasure to read and brings an essential contribution to the understanding of nineteenth-century Italy. This publication should inspire new research projects in nineteenth-century history (not only in Italy), based on interdisciplinary collaboration and enhanced by the digital humanities.