Paolina Schiff - Il Profugo - 1881

[RARO] Paolina Schiff - Il profugo (1881) - Prima Edizione Giuseppe Galli (Milano) - Personal family copy of Vittoria Spazzi Kavulyak

Up for auction a rare volume with high documentary value: the first original edition of 1881 of Il profugo, the only and famed novel written by Paolina Schiff (1841-1926), published in Milan by the publisher Giuseppe Galli.
This specific copy has a unique and direct historical provenance: it belonged to the private library of Vittoria Spazzi Kavulyak, direct-line granddaughter of the author (as daughter of Auguste Schiff, who married Spazzi). Vittoria, a prominent intellectual figure in the cosmopolitan Fiume of the late 19th century and married to the Hungarian professor György Kàvulyak, safeguarded this text as an integral part of her family’s memory and cultural heritage.
Historical importance of the work:
Il profugo is not merely a sensational novel; it is a true political and ideological manifesto cloaked in literary fiction. Written by one of the first women admitted to university teaching in Italy and co-founder of the League for the Promotion of Women’s Interests, the book intertwines the stories of a group of patriots between Milan and Greece in 1878. Through these pages, Paolina Schiff vigorously expresses her liberal ideas, Risorgimento patriotism, a deep anticlerical sentiment, and an anticipatory critique of the indissolubility of marriage—central themes of her historic civil battles.

A lot of interest for collectors of Italian 19th-century literary rarities, bibliophiles, and scholars of the history of feminism and the Risorgimento.