The Italian journalist, novelist, and historian Guglielmo Ferrero (1871-1942) devoted his life and his writings to the cause of liberalism.

Guglielmo Ferrero was born in Portica, Piedmont, on July 21, 1871. While a law student at Pisa, Bologna, and Turin, his interest was in contemporary problems, an orientation confirmed by his first meeting in 1889 with the Italian sociologist and historian Cesare Lombroso. In 1893 the two collaborated on a study of female criminality, The Female Offender, and soon afterward Lombroso's daughter Gina became Ferrero's wife.

From 1891 to 1894 Ferrero traveled extensively in Europe, working in the libraries of London, Berlin, and Paris on a projected history of justice. The principal result of his travels was Young Europe (1897). He was already active in the Italian Socialist movement and engaged in polemics in the press with the leading nationalist writers of the country. Also concerned with the problems of recognizing whether a civilization is...