Professor Stephen Milner, British School at Rome, will deliver the 26th Henry Rowlatt Bickley Memorial Lecture on Tuesday 21st May at St Hugh’s College.

The lecture will examine the story of the publication of the 1911 copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy by Leo S. Olshcki and Giuseppe Landi Passerini, to commemorate the anniversary of Italian unification.

Known as the Dante monumentale for its size and magnificence, the history of the production and publication process in the years immediately prior to WW1 saw the project take on a political significance which involved not only the publisher and editor but also D’Annunzio and the Italian navy.