Edoardo Sonzogno

Edoardo Sonzogno (April 21, 1836-March 14, 1920) was an Italian publisher.

A native of Milan, Sonzogno was the son of a businessman who owned a printing plant and bookstore; when he inherited the business upon his father's death he set about turning it into a publishing house, Sonzogno, which opened in 1874. The company specialized in producing cheap editions of early Italian music, and became celebrated for its one-act opera contest, which began in 1883; Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana", in 1888, was by far the most famous opera to win the prize. Sonzogno owned and directed the newspaper "Il Secolo" from 1861 until 1909; in 1894 he established a theater, the Lirico Internazionale, in Milan. He was also one of the first publishers in Italy to launch pocket-book editions of a huge range of Classical authors from all over the world, a collection he called Biblioteca Universale; the price of these minibooks (cm 11,5 x 17,5) was so low, from 1 to 3,5 liras, that anybody could easily afford to set up a vast personal library of Classics, both in fiction and human sciences.

Sonzogno died in Milan in 1920.

References

David Ewen, "Encyclopedia of the Opera"