First published in 1963, this History presented the use of language in poetry and literary prose and individual linguistic phenomena – the persistence and dominance of many dialects, the slow accumulation of knowledge and spread of spoken language use, the decline of courtly language – as elements in the evolution of the national language. An evolution that De Mauro then studied in relation to the major trends of Italian society after unification: the falling but persistent rate of illiteracy, the laborious but slow improvement in education, emigration, early industrialization, internal migration and urbanization, the advent of print, the low availability of reading matter, the birth and impact of cinema, radio and television. The techniques of structural linguistic analysis and statistics were placed at the service of history. The result was a "facing up" (Gramsci) to Italy’s reality, linguistic and not only. And not everyone welcomed it at the time. But the work’s usefulness was nonetheless universally acknowledged and it was revised and reprinted every two or three years, right up to this edition, published to coincide with the celebrations to mark 150 years of Italian unity.