Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio Story
The Original Italian Book Behind Disney's 1940 Animated Movie
Feb 1, 2008
"Once upon a time there was - 'A King!' my little readers will promptly say. No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood..."
You might not have guessed it, but these are the opening lines of the classic Italian children's story, The Adventures of Pinocchio.
An Extraordinary Fortune
Published in countless languages and read by millions of children and adults, the tale of the wooden puppet whose nose grew longer and longer in punishment for telling lies also has been the subject of dozens scholarly essays, and boasts an astonishing number of illustrated editions, from the first Italian drawings of a century ago to present-day comics. Not surprisingly, then, the Pinocchio editions are one of the most sought after collectibles for Italian bibliophiles.
A Late Start as a Children's Writer
Born in 1826 to poor parents, Carlo Lorenzini supported the movement to unite Italy, to which he contributed his journalistic talents. In 1860 he first used the pen-name Collodi, from his mother's native village. In 1875 Felice Paggi - a Florentine publisher specializing in juvenile literature and schoolbooks - hired Collodi to translate Charles Perrault's Mother Goose tales into Italian. Within six years, Collodi found his true vein as a childrens' author.
An Accidental Masterpiece
Pinocchio and all the other characters of Storia di un Burattino (Tale of a Puppet) first appeared on 7 July 1881 in an Italian magazine for children. However, Pinocchio was not loved by his pen-father, who - when submitting the first two chapters - allegedly wrote to the editor, "I am sending you this childish piece: do what you wish with it, but if you publish it pay me well to incite me to write a continuation."
Four months later, bored with the story, Collodi sent in a chapter in which he abruptly ended the narrative with the Fox and the Cat hanging Pinocchio to rob him of his gold coins. The editor of the magazine persuaded Collodi to resume his tale, but two years passed before the last installment of the story finally appeared on 25 January 1883.
Early Italian Editions
The Paggi-Bemporad-Giunti publishing dynasty played an inextricable part in the fortunes of the Pinocchio tale. Felice Paggi published Storia di un Burattino in book form in 1883 as Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio), turning out three thousand copies. Enrico Mazzanti provided the illustrations, and as the first to translate Collodi's puppet in drawing, he established an iconography that set the standard for many later illustrations. Paggi's heirs at Bemporad carried on with later editions, illustrated by artists such as Carlo Chiostri (1901) and Attilio Mussino (1911).
International Editions
The first American edition, printed by Macmillan in 1929, was a landmark in the history of international co-publishing of children's literature. By 1937, when Bemporad authorized a translation in an obscure dialect of the Samoa islands, they had already licensed eighty editions in as many languages. Thus, Pinocchio has become Pinocho in Spanish, Pinokyo in Turkish and Swahili, Pinocolus in Latin, Pinoku in Albanian, Pinaquio in Portuguese, Pinokkio in Swedish, Pinotxo in Catalan, Phinocchio in Gaelic and Pinokjo in Esperanto...
Walt Disney's Pinocchio Cartoon
The copyright on Collodi's tale of the puppet who eventually turned into a real boy ran out in 1940, fifty years after the author's sudden death on 26 October 1890. Immediately, Walt Disney turned Collodi's tale into a multi-million-dollar animated feature film. Indeed, the Disney movie is so famous that an Australian journalist once asked a bewildered Giunti executive: "And how did you manage to obtain the Pinocchio rights from Disney?"
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