Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello (1867 – 1936) is an Italian dramatist, novel writer and in 1934 he received a Nobel Prize for literature. He was born in Sicily, went to the university there and then in Bonn. After he got his doctorate in Italian language, to be more specific in dialectology, he went back to Rome and influenced the literary life.

He got to know the work of Italian naturalists and their influence is felt in his works. He wrote poetry first and his first books of poetry were “Playful Evil” and “Easter of Gea”.

After that he started publishing novels and short stories and the high point of his literary work ends with plays. His first published short story was “Love without love” after which came “Rheinland Elegies”. His first novel was “The Excluded Woman”.

Even though his private and business life were marked by troubles, he spent his time writing. His novel “The Late Mattia Pascal” got most of the attention even though he wrote it while going through a difficult time. During his writing, his wife got ill and a little before that the family money went to waste.

Some of his others works are “The Old and the Young”, “One, no one and One Hundred Thousand” and some books of short stories.

He was mostly known for his playwriting skills. He published 44 plays and the plays that stand out the most are “Six Characters in Search of an Author”, “So it is (if you think so)” and “Henry IV.”.