Fun Facts Friday: Grazia Deledda

Grazia Deledda (27 September, 1871 – 15 August, 1936) was an Italian writer known as “The Voice of Sardinia”. She was the first Italian woman, and second woman, to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Books by Grazia Deledda*

Fun Facts about Grazia Deledda:

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda was born in Nuoro, Sardinia. She was the fourth of seven children born to a middle-class family.
After elementary school, Ms. Deledda was taught by a private tutor. Seeing how the young lady enjoyed writing, the tutor encouraged her to start submitting her short stories and at age 13, Grazia Deledda published her first story in a local journal.
Ms. Deledda met her future husband Palmiro Madesani in Cagliari, 1899. By 1900 they were married and living in Rome.
Her first novel, Stella d’Oriente (1891), published under the pseudonym Ilia di Saint Ismail.
The author published a novel a year even during pregnancies, births, and sickness. It was until her novel Elisas Portolu was published that she found both commercial and critical success, earning a well-deserved reputation as an author.
Garzia Deledda won the 1926 Nobel Prize for “for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general.” Benito Mussolini, who had just consolidated his power, sent her… an autographed picture of himself as a gift of his profound admiration.
In 1930 she translated Eugénie Grandet by French author Honoré de Balzac to Italian.
At first, the Noble laureate welcomed the attention of the public and reporters. However, when her pet cow, Checcka, became irritated with all the commotion, she decided to go back to a more relaxing routine.
Grazia Deledda died of breast cancer, the same disease that afflicted Maria Concezione the protagonist of her last novel, The Church of Solitude (La chiesa della solitudine).
Sardinian authors were greatly influenced by Grazia Deledda, founding the Sardinia Literary Spring. Her birthplace and childhood home in Nuoro is considered a national heritage site, and is now a museum for the writer. She was even honored with a Google Doodle.