1929

When one says “giallo”, he means Mondadori: Gialli Mondadori

“Be very careful with the translations,” said Arnoldo Mondadori to the young Alberto Tedeschi when he first began his activity as executive director of the section Gialli Economici. “I want to target an educated public!” And so it was that Arnoldo bet on the introduction in Italy of detective stories, an imported genre already successful in many countries. Detective stories proved to be very profitable for Mondadori starting with the attribution of the series name (giallo) to the whole genre. The story begins in 1929 with the publication of Gialli Mondadori, the first example of an Italian book series dedicated to detective stories.

Numerous editorial initiatives followed from the hardback Libri Gialli (1929-1941), to the paperback Gialli Economici (1933-1942), and the rich Supergialli (1933-1941) collection. The initial instructions by Arnoldo were meticulously followed with translators putting in a strong effort in the creation of a “detective vocabulary”. Fascism tried to eradicate an already deep-rooted genre, but it was only a brief parenthesis and Gialli Mondadori (1946), a periodical sold at newsstands, arrived at the end of the war.

Together with famous mystery authors such as Agatha Christie, John Dickinson Carr and Raymond Chandler, this book series also included the most important representatives of minor genres that became popular in the last decades including the psychological mystery story by Ruth Rendell or the urban noir by Cornell Woorlich. And since 1996 Giallo Mondadori has also been available in bookshops so as to reach a broader public.