Silvio Pellico - Biography

Patriot and writer, born in Saluzzo, Piedmont, N Italy. A member of the Carboneria secret society, he was involved in the anti-Austrian review Il Conciliatore. In 1820 he was arrested and given the death penalty, which was then commuted to 20 years in the notorious Spilberk jail. Pardoned in 1830, his memoirs Le mie prigioni (1832) became a great success and one of the Risorgimento classics. Among other works are the tragedies Francesca da Rimini (1815) and Corradino (1834), and the poems Poesie inedite (1837).

Silvio Pellico (June 24, 1788 - January 31, 1854) was an Italian writer, poet, dramatist and patriot.

Biography

Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo (Piedmont).

He spent the earlier portion of his life at Pinerolo and Turin, under the tuition of a priest named Manavella.

His tragedy Francesca da Rimini was brought out with success by Carlotta Marchionni at Milan in 1818.

Pellico had in the meantime continued his work as tutor, first to the unfortunate son of Count Briche, and then to the two sons of Count Porro Lambertenghi.

Of the powerful literary executive which gathered about Counts Porro and Confalonieri, Pellico was the able secretary the management of the Conciliatore, a review which appeared in 1818 as the organ of the association, resting largely upon him.

The sentence of death pronounced on him in February 1822 was finally commuted to fifteen years of carcere duro, and in the following April he was placed in the Spielberg, at Brünn (today's Brno). In 1832 appeared his Gismonda da Mendrizio, Erodiade and the Leoniero, under the title of Tre nuove tragedie, and in the same year the work which gave him his European fame, Le mie prigioni, an account of his sufferings in prison. The last gained him the friendship of the Marchesa di Barolo, the reformer of the Turin prisons, and in 1834 he accepted from her a yearly pension of 1200 francs. His tragedy Tommaso Moro had been published in 1833, his most important subsequent publication being the Opere inedite in 1837.

On the decease of his parents in 1838 he was received into the Casa Barolo, where he remained till his death, assisting the marchesa in her charities, and writing chiefly upon religious themes. A fragmentary biography of the marchesa by Pellico was published in Italian and English after her death.

He died in 1854, and was buried in the Camposanto at Turin.

While Pellico's tragedies are generally considered mediocre, the simple narrative and naive egotism of Le mie prigioni has established his strongest claim to remembrance, winning fame by his misfortunes rather than by his genius.