The Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, founded in 1819 by Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, a merchant

Merchant

A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

 from Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

, is a library in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. It played a vital role in linking the culture of Italy with that of other Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an countries in the 19th century, and also became one of the chief reference points for the Risorgimento movement.

It began as a reading room that provided leading European periodicals for Florentines and visitors from abroad in a setting that encouraged conversation and the exchange of ideas. A circulating library with the latest publications in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 was installed next to the reading room.

Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist...

 and Alessandro Manzoni

Alessandro Manzoni

Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist.He is famous for the novel The Betrothed , generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature...

 frequented the Gabinetto Vieusseux when they were in Florence, as did Stendhal

Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...

, Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

, J. F. Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...

, Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...

, Dostoevsky, Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, Émile Zola

Émile Zola

Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

, André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

, Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

, Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...

 and D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

.
The institute was run privately by the Vieusseux family until 1919 when it became a foundation with a governing body

Board of governors

Board of governors is a term sometimes applied to the board of directors of a public entity or non-profit organization.Many public institutions, such as public universities, are government-owned corporations. The British Broadcasting Corporation was managed by a board of governors, though this role...

 headed by the Mayor

Mayor

In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

 of Florence or one of his delegates.

Its work continued in the 20th century under the direction of distinguished men of letters such as Bonaventura Tecchi, Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.- Early years :...

 and, for forty years, Alessandro Bonsanti, who set up three new departments: the Laboratory for the conservation of books damaged in the 1966 flood, the Centro Romantico, specializing in studies in romanticism and the 19th century, and the Archivio Contemporaneo, now named after Bonsanti, which houses manuscripts, private papers and private libraries donated by leading figures in 20th century culture. The library continues to expand according to the criteria laid down by its founder.

The institute also organizes meetings, conferences and exhibitions throughout the year; in 1995 the quarterly review founded by Bonsanti in 1966 “Antologia Vieusseux” (new series) resumed publication.

The Library’s Holdings

The cosmopolitan character of this library during the 19th century, expressed in its two sections, “lending library” and the reading room for journals, remains its unique feature even today, especially for the nature of the collection. Today the library’s collection, expanded through acquisition and numerous donations, amounts to about 300,000 monographs in several languages (Italian, French, English, and some sources in German), offering today full documentation of 19th- and 20th-century literature in the original language and in translation, travel accounts, essays on cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries, and biographies. The tradition of leisure reading, however, is still provided for with a large collection of detective stories and best-sellers of various genres.
In total there are about 2,700 journals, in several languages, of which nearly 600 are from the 19th century; there are about 350 currently circulation journals available.

Alessandro Bonsanti Contemporary Archives

In October 1975 the Contemporary Archives opened in the Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux under the leadership its director at the time, Alessandro Bonsanti, to whom the archives are now dedicated.

Established with the principal goal of collecting diverse material related to influential contemporary figures, the Archives, housed in the beautiful 14th-century rooms of the city-owned Palazzo Corsini Suarez, distinguishes itself in the landscape of the many institutes established because of its aim to conserve the multi-faceted nature of disciplines of study, and therefore of those disciplines’ documentation. This documentation ranges from creative literature (narrative and poetry) to literary criticism, from music to theater, from architecture to painting, from photographs to art criticism.

Currently the Archives house more than 130 “funds,” or collections related to individual authors, in total more than 500,000 documents and 70,000 volumes added by donation, deposit, and loan. Once organized and inventoried, these collections are available to the public according to the precise rules intended to protect this important cultural resource.

Conditions for access

Consultation is available by appointment and requires a letter of introduction for students.

Conservation services

The Conservation Center is the division of the Gabinetto Vieusseux that oversees the physical protection of the collection housed in the Institute. It collaborates with the other divisions to look over all activities that could interfere with the integrity of the documents and collections: use, storage, maintenance, exhibitions, and reproductions, etc. Making up the Center are the restoration laboratory, a laboratory for photographs and microfilm, a division for the digitalization of documents, and a specialized library that is also open to the public. The Center has created data bases in order to manage its activities; in particular, it has created files of the surveys in order to analyze the documents’ state of conservation continuously. These files keep track of the most important technical features subject to eventual mutation or damage as well as characteristic elements of the documents. The surveys, which are useful for research and can set aside specific documents, are carried out systematically on the collections in the Contemporary Archives and make up a data bank full of information about particular written materials and documented mediations from the 20th century.

Another data base has been organized for the gathering of works of art (drawings, prints, paintings, and sculpture) in the collections of the Contemporary Archives. By May 2004 there were 1,616 files for as many pieces in the collection. This archive is open to the users of the Institute. The collections of photographic material are also inspected with a detailed analysis of their state of conservation. These files were created using the “scheda F” of the Ministero per i Beni culturali e le attività culturali (BBCC; Ministry for Arts and Culture) as a reference.

Restoration Laboratory

The Restoration Laboratory was opened in 1968 on the premises of Palazzo Acciaiuoli della Certosa, alongside the framework that developed after the November 4, 1966 flood caused enormous damage to the Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux’s collection. The Recovery Center focused on books published after 1850 and periodicals from 1900 onward, and the Restoration Laboratory treated the oldest materials. These two divisions merged into one laboratory in 1984. In the early seventies, with the return of the full activity of the Gabinetto Vieusseux, the laboratory began to occupy itself with all other needs for the Institute’s restoration, apart from those damaged in the flood. many of the archived materials required even urgent assistance, especially with the opening of the Contemporary Archives in 1974. Also in the mid-seventies, the Restoration Laboratory connected with many other institutes and agencies and assisted them with restorations, collaborations, and advice. Also, visits from volunteers and trainees from various countries became a regular occurrence. Between December 1988 and January 1999, the laboratory transferred to its current location on Via Maggio. Four restorers work in the laboratory.

Specialized Library

The Specialized Library collects works that deal with the various aspects of the physical preservation of documents. It is open to the public during the same hours as the Contemporary Archives.
It has a catalogue that is completely computerized and organized by subject that allows for perusal of the periodicals.
It holds 63 periodicals and about 600 publications among monographs and other resources, amounting to about 5,350 entries.

Centro Romantico

The Centro Romantico, using the documents preserved at the Institute as a point of departure, promores research and initiatives about European society in the nineenth century. In particular, however, this division of the Gabinetto Vieusseux examines the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge and the comparisons of many different cultures and experiences, which characterized Giovan Piero Vieusseux’s salon. This dissemination of information, the vast number of conversations through letters from different countries, the network of correspondence among booksellers, the circulation of publications and reviews, the documentation of scientific progression, the reading public, the illumination of social and economic issues, and the attention to visitors from abroad were all fundamental for the initiatives that led to the creation of the Gabinetto Vieusseux; they also took note of a great number of influential non-political characters in Florence and Tuscany’s recent history.
The activity of research and the distribution of its findings extend into manifold aspects of our current culture, and the consultation and the support of the research make up a part of the duties of the Centro.

Among the works currently in progress are the computerized thematic and nominative index of the Vieusseux Letters, the catalogue of the correspondences of Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, and the computerized archive concerning European society in the 19th century, which is still in the stages of preparation.
In November 1997, the Italian Society for the Study of the Relationships Between Science and Literature was founded with its center close to the Centro Romantico.
Fosco Maraini’s Asian Library and Photograph Archives were given to the Centro Romantico thanks to the support of the Ente Cassa Risparmio di Firenze.