The history of English language teaching and learning in Italy is to a large extent still uncharted territory. This contribution aims to further our knowledge of how English was taught in Italy at the turn of 20th century by surveying English language teaching materials produced by women authors in Italy.
The history of English language teaching and learning in Italy is to a large extent still uncharted territory (Nava and Pedrazzini 2019, Shvanyukova 2019). This contribution aims to further our knowledge of how English was taught in Italy at the turn of the twentieth century by surveying English language teaching materials produced by women authors in Italy and used in the Italian context. The authors of the first six grammars of English for Italian learners published during the eighteenth century were all men (Vicentini 2012/2015) and it appears that, although in Post-unification Italy women worked as language teachers (Franchini and Puzzuoli 2005), English language teaching materials continued to be produced exclusively by men. Only at the turn of the twentieth century, with the publication of Pia Padovani's Novissima grammatica per lo studio della lingua inglese, ecc. in 1904, followed byGrammatica inglese per le scuole secondarie, co-authored by Olga Bicchierai (Meadmore and Bicchierai, Venezia, 1911-1912), Beatrice Blount-Gambrosier's Nuova grammatica inglese-italiana, ecc. (Salerno, 1914) and Anna Benedetti's Nuova grammatica della lingua inglese, ecc. (Palermo, 1915), do women appear as authors of English language teaching materials. These women authors and the materials they produced will be the focus of my investigation.
