Bartolomeo Vanzetti letters and translation

1925-1927, 1968

Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927) and Nicola Sacco (1891-1927) were Italian-American anarchists convicted of murdering two men during a robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920. Appeals on their behalf were unsuccessful and they were executed on August 23, 1927. The collection consists of five autograph letters by Vanzetti, 1925-1927, one with an accompanying note; a copy of a 1929 letter by a newspaper editor regarding his reportage on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, with its 1968 letter of donation; and Vanzetti’s manuscript English translation of Piero Jahier’s La Guerra e la Pace : Pagina Scelte, an Italian edition of anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s 1861 work, La Guerre et la Paix. Three autograph letters from Vanzetti to Roger Baldwin, 1925-1926, concern the translation of the Jahier work; an autograph letter from Vanzetti to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1926, hopes that she will be able to visit him; and an autograph letter from Vanzetti to Robertson Trowbridge, 1927, accompanied by Trowbridge’s explanatory note, thanks him for copying some verses by Shelley. Also present is a copy of a letter written by New York World editor Philip Duffield Stong to B.W. Huesch, 1929, defending the integrity of his journalism in regard to his interview with Sacco and Vanzetti at Dedham Prison in 1927. The copy was provided by Stong’s former co-worker John Nicholas Beffel; his 1968 cover letter provides further detail.