Prison Notebooks

The Prison Notebooks (Italian: Quaderni del carcere [kwaˈdɛrni del ˈkartʃere]) are a series of essays written by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926. The notebooks were written between 1929 and 1935, when Gramsci was released from prison to a medical center on grounds of ill-health. His friend, Piero Sraffa, had supplied the writing implements and notebooks. Gramsci died in April 1937. Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. The original Prison Notebooks are kept at the Fondazione Gramsci in Rome. These notebooks were initially smuggled out of prison, catalogued by Gramsci's sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht, and sent to Moscow for safekeeping. They were returned to Italy after World War II and have since been preserved by the Gramsci Foundation. Although written unsystematically, the Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources – not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel and Benedetto Croce. His notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including Italian history and nationalism, the French Revolution, Fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, folklore, religion and high and popular culture. Smuggled out of the prison in the 1930s, the first edition was published in 1947 and won the Viareggio Prize a few months later. Gramsci's posthumous award of the Viareggio Prize was followed by a memorial from the Constituent Assembly of Italy on April 28, 1947. The first published translations in English of some of the notebooks were made by Louis Marks in 1957, with more extensive Selections from the Prison Notebooks translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith printed in 1971. Ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory that are...