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This essay focuses on references to Boccaccio in Umberto Notari’s novel, “Quelle signore” (1904). Notari’s text achieved phenomenal and long-term success (eighty thousand copies in a few months and three hundred copies in 1920), owing to the scabrous theme (the bestseller is a fictitious copy of prostitute Anna – alias Marchetta – ’s diary), as well as to the clever exploitation of the trial Notari was brought to for “outrage against decency”. Far from being an epiphenomenon, Notari’s subtle playing with quotations – Boccaccio is intermingled with Zola’s “Confession de Claude” and, especially, “Nana” – gives the novel a literary character, without confing it to a sensational reportage or a pseudo-veristic sketch.