Salvatore Farina (10 January 1846 – 15 December 1918) was an Italian

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...

whose style of sentimental humor has been compared to that of

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

. He was nominated for the

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

three times.

Biography

A Sardinian by birth, he graduated in law at the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

before moving to Milan, where he became closely associated with the

Scapigliatura ''Scapigliatura'' () is the name of an artistic movement that developed in Italy after the Risorgimento period (1815–71). The movement included poets, writers, musicians, painters and sculptors. The term Scapigliatura is the Italian equivalent ...

, and wrote for the ''Rivista minima'' and ''Nuova antologia'' and edited the ''Gazzetta musicale''. He wrote a chapter of Tarchetti's '' Fosca'' (1869) to ensure that his dying and destitute friend was paid for its serialization. He suffered from a long period of

amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or brain diseases,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be temporarily caused by t ...

, subsequently reconstructing his life in three volumes of autobiography (1910–15).

Life

Born in the

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

n town of

Sorso Sorso () is a ''comune'' (municipality) of c. 14,700 inhabitants in the province of Sassari in the Italy, Italian region Sardinia, located about north of Sassari. Overview Sorso is a tourist resort facing the Gulf of Asinara. Apart tourism, the e ...

, he studied

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

and

Pavia Pavia ( , ; ; ; ; ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, in Northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino (river), Ticino near its confluence with the Po (river), Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was a major polit ...

before moving to

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 ...

and taking up literature, remaining there for the rest of his life. The late nineteenth century English novelist

George Gissing George Robert Gissing ( ; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. In the 1890s he was considered one of the three greatest novelists in England, and by the 1940s he had been ...

thought that his novella ''Si Muore'', read by him in January 1890, was 'far more interesting than I expected; in fact excellently written'.Coustillas, Pierre ed. London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: the Diary of George Gissing, Novelist. Brighton: Harvester Press,1978, p.202.

Works

* ''Il tesoro di Donnina'' (1873) * ''Amore bendato'' (1875) * ''Capelli biondi'' (1876) * ''Mio figlio!'' (1877-1881) * ''Si Muore: L'ultima battaglia di Prete Agostino'' (1886) * ''Frutti proibiti'' * ''Un tiranno al bagni di mare'' * ''Cuore e blasone'' * ''Due amori'' * ''Amore ha cento occhi'' * ''Per la vita e per la morte'' * ''La mia giornata'', a trilogy: ** ''Dall'alba al meriggio'' (1910) ** ''Care ombre'' (1913) ** ''Dal meriggio al tramonto'' (1915)

References

* ''Convegno Salvatore Farina: la figura e il ruolo a 150 anni dalla nascita'' (1996 : Sorso, Italy) ;Notes

External links

* *
Farina page, with picture
(in Italian) 1846 births 1918 deaths People from Sorso Italian male writers Sardinian literature {{Italy-writer-stub