Alessandro Bonsanti (November 25, 1904 in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

– February 17, 1984 in Florence) was a writer and Italian politician.

Biography

Alessandro Bonsanti, writer, was born in

. Very young, after completing his studies, he moved to work in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, where he worked for three years as an employee at a local bank, collaborating in the magazine ''La Fiera Literaria'', where he published his first Brigants story in

Maremma The Maremma (, ; from Latin , "maritime and) is a geographical region located between Lazio and Tuscany, Central Italy. The biggest city is Grosseto. The region, with a long history, is traditionally populated by the '' butteri'', mounted c ...

. Returning to Florence, he came into contact with the literary environment that animated '' Solaria'' (the European magazine, which existed from 1926 to 1936), who was a collaborator and director, publishing military narrative (1927) ''The loving servant'' (1929) and ''the whims of 'Adriana'' (1934), republished in distant Racconti 1962, texts of the past that have to do with a distant social history. In 1937 Bonsanti founded and assumed the direction of publishing at a magazine that collected the inheritance of ''Solaria''. In 1941 he took over as la direzione del Gabinetto scientifìco-letterario Vieusseux (Director of the Vieusseux Scientific-Literature Cabinet), left vacant by

Eugenio Montale Eugenio Montale (; 12 October 1896 – 12 September 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator. In 1975, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 'for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has ...

. This was a prestigious assignment that Bonsanti held with great willingness and firmness, making for almost forty years an untiring promoter of various cultural initiatives. During the war, he published two books: ''Dialoghi e altre prose'' (Dialogues and Other Prose) (1940) and ''Introduzione al gran viaggio (''Introduction to the Great Trip) (1944). The following year he assumed the position of Director of ''Il Mondo'', which he himself founded with

and Arturo Loria. Other books to remember are: ''La vipera e il toro'' (1955) and ''cavalli di bronzo'' (1956). In recent years Bonsanti's interests were also addressed to active politics; in this period he was approaching the Republican Party of Spadolini and in 1983 was elected

mayor of Florence The Mayor of Florence is an elected politician who, along with Florence's City Council of 36 members, is accountable for the strategic government of Florence. The title is the equivalent of Lord Mayor in the meaning of an actual executive leader ...

, head of a

pentapartito The Pentapartito (from Greek , "five", and Italian , "party"), commonly shortened to CAF (from the initials of Craxi, Andreotti and Forlani), refers to the coalition government of five Italian political parties that formed between June 1981 ...

junta, which was not completed due to his death in 1984. His daughter Sandra, a journalist, was a member of the Republic. Alessandro Bonsanti is buried in the

Cimitero delle Porte Sante Cimitero delle Porte Sante (''The Sacred Doors Cemetery'') is a monumental cemetery in Florence located within the fortified bastion of the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte. History The idea of a burial site near San Miniato was conceived ar ...

in Florence. He was nominated for the

Strega Prize The Strega Prize ( ) is the most important Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction written in the Italian language by an author of any nationality and first published between 1 March of t ...

Main works

* ''La serva amorosa'', Firenze, 1929 * ''I capricci dell'Adriana'', Firenze, 1934 * ''Racconto militare'', Firenze, 1937 * ''Dialoghi e altre prose'', Firenze, 1940 * ''Introduzione al gran viaggio'', Roma, 1944 * ''La vipera e il toro'', Firenze, 1955 * ''Sopra alcuni personaggi eventuali'', Sarzana, 1956 * ''I cavalli di bronzo'', Firenze, 1956 * ''Racconti lontani'', Milano, 1962 * ''La buca di San Colombario'', 4 vol., Milano, 1964–1973 * ''La nuova stazione di Firenze'', Milano, 1965 * ''Teatro domestico'', Milano, 1970 * ''Portolani d'agosto'', Milano, 1978

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonsanti, Alessandro 1904 births 1984 deaths Writers from Florence Mayors of Florence 20th-century Italian male writers Italian magazine founders