Guido da Verona (the pseudonym of Guido Verona; 7 May 1881 5 April 1939) was an Italian poet and novelist.
Born in
Saliceto Panaro to a Jewish family, Verona started his career as a poet in 1901 with the poetry collection ''Commemorazione del fatto d'arme di Brichetto'', followed by ''I frammenti d'un poema'' (1902) and ''Bianco amore'' (1907).
He gained a larger popularity as a novelist, starting from 1911 when he published his first novel ''Colei che non si deve amare'', considered among the most representative examples of the Italian
Feuilleton
A ''feuilleton'' (; a diminutive of , the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle ...
. He later was the most commercially successful Italian writer between 1914 and 1939: particularly his novel ''Mimì Bluette, fiore del mio giardino'', which reached 300,000 copies in 1922, an impressive run in Italy where illiteracy characterized the majority of the population.
He was a signatory to the
Manifesto of Fascist intellectuals in 1925; in 1929 he published a parody novel of
Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher.
He is famous for the novel ''The Betrothed (Manzoni novel), The Betrothed'' (orig. ) (1827), generally ranked among ...
's ''
The Betrothed'', that actually was an implicit satire against fascism.
He became an intellectual unpopular with the
Fascist regime
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...
and marginalized after the approval of
racial laws
Anti-Jewish laws have been a common occurrence throughout the history of antisemitism and Jewish history. Examples of such laws include special Jewish quotas, Jewish taxes and Jewish "disabilities".
During the 1930s and early 1940s, some law ...
. Da Verona committed suicide 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 ...
at age 57.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Verona, Guido
1881 births
1939 suicides
1939 deaths
Religious leaders from the Province of Modena
Italian male poets
Suicides in Milan
Italian male novelists
20th-century Italian poets
20th-century Italian novelists
Jewish Italian writers
20th-century Italian male writers
20th-century pseudonymous writers
Suicides by Jews during the Holocaust
Italian Jews who died in the Holocaust
Italian fascists
Jewish fascists