Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco (1932 to 2016) was an Italian semiotician, philosopher and novelist, best known for his medieval murder mystery The Name of the Rose (1980).

Eco was born on 5 January 1932 in Alessandria, Piedmont. He graduated in philosophy from the University of Turin in 1954, taught in Florence and at the Milan Polytechnic, and moved to the University of Bologna in 1971, where he held the chair of semiotics and became professor emeritus in 2008. His academic books include Opera aperta (1962; in English as The Open Work, 1989), A Theory of Semiotics (Italian 1975, English 1976), The Role of the Reader (1979) and The Limits of Interpretation (1990).

His first novel, Il nome della rosa, came out from Bompiani in 1980 when he was 48. It won the Strega Prize in 1981, was published in William Weaver's English translation in 1983, has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and was filmed by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1986. Six further novels followed: Foucault's Pendulum (Italian 1988, English 1989), The Island of the Day Before (1994; 1995), Baudolino (2000; 2001), The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004; 2005), The Prague Cemetery (2010; 2011) and Numero Zero (2015). He died in Milan on 19 February 2016.

For collectors

Eco collectors usually start with The Name of the Rose. The true first edition is the Italian one, published by Bompiani in 1980; the first English translation, by William Weaver, appeared in 1983 from Harcourt in the United States. With sales in the tens of millions, later printings are plentiful, so the edition statement and date need checking on any copy offered as early.