Grazia Deledda Biography and List of Works

Italian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. Deledda spent her childhood in a small isolated village, where the people spoke Logudorese, a dialect closely related to Latin. She was a member of the 'verismo', a 19th- century Italian literary movement related to naturalism. Her stories are usually set in Sardinia, where the ancient ways conflict with modern, and the characters are forced to work out solutions to their moral issues.

Deledda was born in the Sardinian village of Nuoro, where her father served as a mayor. Until the age of ten, Deledda attended the local elementary school, which was her only formal education, before she was privately tutored in French and Italian. Deledda wasted no time in getting down to a career as a writer. At the age of 8 she began to write poems, and published her first short story at the age of seventeen in a women's magazine. These early gentle, emotional works reflected the influence of folklore. Her first novel, FIOR DI SAREGNA, appeared in 1892. In was followed by ANIME ONESTE in 1895.

In 1900 she married Palmiro Madesani, and moved with him to Rome. To get inspiration for her books, Deledda made frequent visits to her place of birth. Her characters were small landowners, servants, farmers, and shepherds. For the remainder of her life, Deledda wrote novels at the rate about one a year, producing some 40 novels. She made her only travel abroad in 1927, to Stockholm, when she attended the Nobel Prize ceremonies. Deledda died in Rome on August 15, 1936.

The Old man of the Mountain (1900) was the first of the author's many books dealing with simple characters and illustrated the destructive and tragic effects of overpowering sexual attractions. Among Deladda's other major works is ELIAS PORTOLU (1903), which depicted a shepherd, who prepares to enter the priesthood and who must resolve the conflict between his impossible love and demands of society. CENERE (1904) was a story of a young girl who sacrifices herself for her illegitimate child, killing herself in order not to harm his son's prospects in life. LA MADRE (1920) was a tragedy, which was set in an isolated Sardinian village. A priest has fallen in love and his mother suffers more than she can bear. Deledda's later novels have a wider setting than the harshly beautiful Sardinia but continue to deal with moral and ethical themes. Her autobiographical novel COSIMA, dealing with the subject of breast cancer, was published posthumously in 1937.

For further reading: 'Introduction to The Mother' by D.H. Lawrence (1928); The Modern Italian Novel from Capuana to Tozzi by S. Pacifici (1972); Self-Made Woman by C.A. Balducci (1975); Grazia Deledda by M. Aste (1990) - NOTE: Only nine women have received (1901-1997) the Nobel Prize for Literature: Grazia Deledda, Selma Lagerlöf, Sigrid Undset, Pearl S. Buck, Gabriela Mistral, Nelly Sachs, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Wislawa Szymborska

AMORE REGALE, (1891)