by Gabriele D’Annunzio

Gabriele D’Annunzio was born in Pescara, a small town in the Abruzzi region of Italy, in 1863. He went on to become a national treasure of Italy, the most celebrated (and sometimes reviled) poet, playwright, and novelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His huge body of work was read widely across all social classes, translated in many languages, and imitated in Italy and abroad. D’Annunzio came from a distinguished family of merchants and landowners but his father (who was once the mayor of Pescara) was a dissolute man. He fathered several illegitimate children, though Gabriele was legitimate, and, in the late 1880s, finally abandoned his devoted wife to live with one of his mistresses. Gabriele, who was always very attached to his mother, did not attend his father’s funeral in 1893. Initially educated at...