Murder and Media in the New Rome

An insightful look into the origins of modern Italian media culture by examining a sensational crime and trial that took place in Rome in the late 1870s, when a bloody murder triggered a national spectacle that became the first great media circus in the new nation of Italy, crucially shaping the young state's public sphere and image of itself.

"In this imaginatively yet scrupulously researched study, Simpson turns an ephemeral scandal of adultery and murder into a tool with which to reconstruct the intersecting, evolving realms of a national public life which collided in early post-Risorgimento Italy. The so-called 'Fadda Affair' becomes a prism through which are reflected (among other things) trial by jury all'italiana, the emergence of popular scandal-mongering journalism, the myths and social realities of the Italian military, the role - or lack thereof - of women in the public sphere, the rise of the circus as popular entertainment, and the violent clash of North and South. Simpson tells his tale brilliantly and wisely, and in the process gives us a unique new window onto the disconcerting spectacle of Italy, and Italians, in the making." - Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley

"Supported by meticulous research and insightful analysis of varied contemporary sources, Murder and Media in the New Rome is an informed study of 'the first great media circus' in the new Italian state. Simpson examines the Fadda trial as the stage where participants and audience enacted wider social, cultural, and gender conflicts. This book offers a fascinating study of how numerous interpreters such as painters, novelists, poets, lawyers, and especially the new media protagonists - the newspaper reporters - depicted these conflicts in varying and meaningful ways. Written in an eminently readable prose-style that captures vividly the drama of murder and its aftermath, this book provides an original discussion of a now-forgotten event that gathered mass attention in late nineteenth-century Italy. In doing so, it furnishes a glimpse of a whole period of Italian history that is generally overlooked in the English-speaking world." - Cristina Della Coletta, Professor of Italian, University of Virginia

THOMAS SIMPSON Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Italian at Northwestern University, USA.