In fact, his pioneering intention of making the reader capable of creating stories, starting from the acts of interpretation and comprehension, is considered a key aspect of postmodern literature.Īnother characteristic is the affinity between the content of his novels and tales and adolescent reading audience, which can be clearly observed through the examination of the topics that structure his books. Among them, Umberto Eco stands out for the connection he saw between the theories of Calvino and his own concept of the ideal reader – which can be read in his work The Role of the Reader (1979) –, and he revealed his admiration for what Calvino stated in If on a winter's night a traveler (1979) and in Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1989) (Eco, 1996, pp. Obviously Calvino was not the first author who proposed this innovative author/reader relationship, but certainly his ideas had been appreciated before and after his demise by many literature and semantics expert. His responsibility as an active reader consists in a process of literary creation that transcends the ordinary limits established by a conventional perspective. Nevertheless, his method does not imply a passive attitude of the reader, who needs to be not only an active traveller through the pages of novels and essays, but also a potential creator, that is, a cunning storyteller or a critic. Calvino unlikely reached for an indecipherable method to express the most profound denotations of his works as a matter of fact, he frequently turned the great amount of his reflections into a helpful combination of educational and theoretical considerations. The apparently simplicity of his texts often hides a more complex and relevant meaning that helps the reader to fathom cultural, political and philosophical issues. In addition, the content of his books is still used as a guide for both students and teachers in academic research and education. His works had been translated in many languages 1 and a lot of writers had been inspired by his undisputed talent. Now a selection of these beautifully crafted essays has been gathered together and introduced by Richard Hawking to form the first, we hope, of a quartet of Bell’s writings on the seasons.We can easily consider Italo Calvino one of the most significant twentieth century Italian authors. His columns were, as his son Martin Bell says in his preface, ‘not really journalism but prose poems about the natural life around him’, and these essays share that which is common to all his writing – a deep appreciation of the small moments of each passing day. In addition to the books that followed his famous trilogy, from 1950 to 1980 Bell wrote a weekly column called ‘A Countryman’s Notebook’ for Suffolk and Norfolk’s long-serving local paper, the Eastern Daily Press. Gentleness fits him naturally, just as the purity of his words opens our eyes to a life all around us which we might otherwise never have seen.’ So wrote the journalist Clement Court of his contemporary, the farmer-cum-writer Adrian Bell, best known for his rural trilogy, Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree, which vividly describe a time before machinery took over much of the work of men and beasts, altering the landscape and the face of farming forever. ‘Bell writes always of the ordinary things, of the seasons, of memories, of rain and laughter. We’re delighted to bring you news of a Slightly Foxed special release: Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Winter Notebook.