Camilleri Andrea

Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019), Italian actor, writer and director. Born in Porto Empedocle (Agrigento, Sicily), he moved to Rome in 1949. After success as a theatre director, he was employed by RAI to direct and produce plays for both television and radio. He taught theatre direction at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia and at the Accademia…

Bellezza Dario

Dario Bellezza (1944-1996), Italian poet, novelist and playwright, who was born and spent his whole life in Rome. A very prolific writer of what was considered controversial work, his poetry was immediately acclaimed and led to his winning the prestigious Viareggio Prize in 1976 at the age of only 32. He also worked for a…

Fenimore Woolson Constance

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894), American novelist and short story writer. Born in New Hampshire, she travelled widely around the United States and published collections of short stories. In 1879 after her mother’s death she moved to Europe, meeting Henry James the following year who became a close friend. A number of novels followed, and short…

Waiblinger Wilhelm Friedrich

Wilhelm Friedrich Waiblinger (1804-1830), German romantic poet, mostly remembered today in connection with Friedrich Hölderlin. Waiblinger, who used to visit the older poet and take him out for walks, left an account of Hölderlin’s life in Tübingen in Hölderlins Leben, Dichtung und Wahnsinn (“Hölderlin’s life, poetry and madness”). He died in Rome at the age…

von Meysenburg Malwida

Malwida von Meysenburg (1816-1903), German author, feminist and revolutionary thinker. Because of her democratic and feminist convictions she broke with her family, joining a women’s congregational school in Hamburg and then escaping arrest by fleeing to England. There she taught and translated, while maintaining her wide contacts. She moved to Italy in 1862, supporting herself…

Corso Gregory

Gregory Corso (1930-2001), American poet, a younger member of the group of Beat Generation writers (with Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs). Corso discovered literature while in prison as a teenager and started writing poetry. Meeting Ginsberg after his release from prison in 1949, he mixed with other ‘Beat’ writers and saw the rise of the Beat-nik…

Shelley Percy Bysshe

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet. As reckless and brilliant in his poetry as in his life, Shelley poured out the great body of his major work in less than a decade, and drowned off the coast of Tuscany at the age of 29. He is remembered as a love poet (“Lines Written in the…

Keats John

John Keats (1795-1821), born the son of a stable manager from the East End of London, he left school at 14 and trained as an apothecary, studying medicine and then surgery. Although poor, he gave up medicine for poetry and, in the twelve months from September 1818, he produced an outpouring of major poetry which…