Grazia Deledda Biography

Writer Grazia Deledda: Image from Nobel Foundation

Grazia Deledda (1871-1936)

Italian Novelist and Short-Story Writer

Grazia Deledda (September 27, 1871 – August 15, 1936) was an Italian novelist and short-story writer whose works won her the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1926. She belonged to the literary movement of Realism and Decadence.

Profile of Grazia Deledda

She was born in Nuoro into a well-off family and attended elementary school. Later she was educated by a private tutor and moved on to self-study literature.

She first published some novels on the magazine L’ultima moda.  Between prose and poetry are, among her first works, Paesaggi sardi, published by Speirani in 1896. In 1900, after having married Palmiro Madesani, functionary of the Ministry of War, she moved to Rome. Her work began to gain critical acclaim after publishing of Anime oneste (1895) and of Il vecchio della montagna (1900), plus the collaboration with magazines La Sardegna, Piccola rivista and Nuova Antologia. 

It was in 1903 when she published Elias Portolu that her fate as a writer was sealed. She started her work as a successful novelist with other theatrical works: Cenere (1904), L’edera (1908), Sino al confine (1911), Colombo e sparvieri (1912), Canne al vento (1913), L’incendio nell’oliveto (1918), Il Dio dei venti (1922).

Cenere inspired the film with famous Italian actress Eleanora Duse.

Deledda also wrote an autobiographical novel, Cosima, in 1937. The book discusses the subject of breast cancer.

Deledda wrote nearly 50 novels.  Her work is mainly based on love, pain and death, as a matter of fact, and many of them concerned with the difficult lives of peasants in her native island.  Influence in her work can be recognized in the verism of Giovanni Verga, and decantism by Gabriele D’Annunzio.  She died in Rome at the age of 64.

Key Works by Grazia Deledda:

• Fior di Sardegna (1892)
• La via del male (1896)
• Racconti sardi (1895)
• Anime oneste (1895)
• The Old Man of the Mountain (1900)
• Dopo il divorzio (1902; English translation: After the Divorce, 1905)
• Elias Portolu (1903)
• Cenere (1904; English translation: Ashes, 1908)
• Nostalgie (1905) (English translation: Nostalgia)
• L’edera (1908)
• Canne al vento (1913) (English Translation: Reeds in the Wind)
• Marianna Sirca (1915)
• La madre (1920; English translation: The Mother)
• La fuga in Egitto (1925)
• Il sigillo d’amore (1926)
• Annalena Bilsini (1928)
• Cosima (1937) published posthumously
• Il cedro del Libano (1939) published posthumously

• Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern (2002)
• Grazia Deledda Autobiography, www.nobelprize.org. Accessed 27 Sept 2011.
• Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)
• Works by Grazia Deledda at Project Gutenberg. Accessed 27 September 2011.