‘Every poet describes himself, as well as his own life, in his writings,’ observed Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in one of his lectures on English literature, which he delivered twice a week to an audience of young people in his palazzo in Palermo. He was speaking of Shakespeare, whom he adored (he said his mistress, whom everyone considered plain, was Measure for Measure) but he could have been speaking of himself. Lampedusa published nothing during his lifetime except three articles in a confidential Genoese journal, but in his posthumous books — The Leopard, Two Stories and a Memory, and a few others — the protagonist is always Lampedusa and the narrative that of Lampedusa’s life.
Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Duke of Palma and Prince of Lampedusa, was born in 1896 to an old aristocratic Sicilian family. He was a lance-corporal during the first world war. Captured in Austria, he escaped and returned home on foot. During the second world war he travelled extensively in Europe. He met his Italian-Latvian wife, Alessandra Wolf Stomersee, in London and married her in Riga. After the war, he returned to Palermo, where he died of cancer in 1957. His masterpiece, The Leopard, was turned down by a number of publishers until it was accepted by Giorgio Bassani for Feltrinelli: to the annoyance of conceited publishers, haunted by the good books they have rejected, it has since become the best-selling Italian novel of all time.
During his travels, Lampedusa wrote extensively to friends and family. His correspondence (Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi tells us in an informative introduction to this edition), consists of two collections: the large one, comprising almost 400 letters between Lampedusa and his wife, is still being edited for publication in Italy; the smaller one covering the years 1925 to 1930, made up of 70 letters addressed to various friends and acquaintances, especially the Piccolo brothers, Casimiro and Lucio, his childhood friends.
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