Author: Pellico, Silvio
Biography:
PELLICO, Silvio (1789-1854: NBG)
As a foreign-language author, Pellico needs only a brief introduction. He was an Italian poet, dramatist, and memoirist, and a fervent patriot. He was born in Saluzzo and received his education at Pinerolo and Turin. A child in frail health but a literary prodigy, he played at dramatic performance with other children and wrote a tragedy on Ossianic themes at the age of ten. After spending four years in Lyon, France, with members of his family, he was appointed professor of French at the school for military orphans in Milan. He served also as a tutor in two aristocratic households. His first play, Francesca da Rimini, was published in 1818, followed by Euphemio da Messina. In 1820, however, he was arrested as a member of the Carbonari movement; imprisoned; and in 1822 sentenced to death. That sentence was commuted to 15 years’ hard labour. In prison he continued to compose tragedies but without paper or ink had to rely on his memory. He was released in 1830, partly because of an uproar caused by a rumour of his death in 1828. He returned to Turin and promptly set about publishing the plays he had committed to memory as well as a prison memoir, Le mie Prigioni (1832), a work that brought him international fame. The marchesa de Barolo, an advocate for prison reform, provided him with a pension and took him into her household as her librarian after the death of his parents in 1838. He died at Turin on 31 Jan. 1854 and was buried in the Camposanto cemetery there. The work by him that is included in this bibliography in a translation by Elizabeth Fries Lummis (later Ellet, q.v.), appears to be the first English version of any of his works. (NBG 39, cols. 509-11; Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911] 70-71)