Per l’educazione patriottica e nazionale degli italiani all’estero l’edizione postuma del libro di lettura o Patria mia di Luigi Bertelli (Vamba) e la sua diffusione in Brasile - For patriotic and national education of italians abroad: the posthumous edition of the book o patria mia of Luigi Bertelli (Vamba) and its dissemination in Brazil

On the basis of a rich archival and printed documentation, the article reconstructs, for the first time, the genesis, the contents, the ideological and cultural trends and the particular editorial success, in Italy and abroad, of one of the most famous and long-running books for the Italian schools abroad published between the two world wars: O Patria mia⋯worthy nurse of the clear people, posthumous work by the famous writer for children Luigi Bertelli, better known by the majority of his young readers with the pseudonym Vamba. The Author dwells, in particular, on the original nationalist, but not Fascist, character of Vamba's work, which, after the establishment in Italy of Mussolini's regime, was subjected, as required by the Florentine publisher Bemporad, to a sort of fascistization of the contents. Nevertheless, the work was never loved by the regime, so much that, in the mid-thirties, although its wide spread, for example, in the Italian schools in Brazil, it was replaced with texts ideologically and politically more in line with the fascist totalitarianism addresses.