Ercole Luigi Morselli
1882–1921
Biography
Ercole Luigi Morselli was born in Pesaro in 1882 and died in Rome in 1921. He was an Italian writer and dramatist. His family moved to Florence in 1891, where his father, a state official, had been posted, and his father died there in 1895. Morselli tried medicine and then literature but finished neither course. His early years were restless, with long journeys in Africa, South America, England and France, before he settled in Rome to write.
His literary career began slowly and was often short of money. The tragicomedy Orione (1910) was a success, but financial security came only with the drama Glauco (1919). Morselli reworked classical myths for a modern audience and often placed antiheroes at their centre, which gave him a different voice from Gabriele D'Annunzio. He also wrote for the cinema. His short story La donna ragno (1915) makes him one of the early precursors of science fiction in Italy. He died of tuberculosis in 1921.
The site holds Storie da ridere.... e da piangere, a collection published in Milan in 1918 that gathers eight stories, including La donna ragno. The volume lets readers see the prose side of a writer better known for his plays, and its title, which promises stories to laugh at and to weep over, points to the range of tone he worked in.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Storie da ridere.... e da piangere
by Ercole Luigi Morselli
Eight tales that are comic and sad at once, opening in a ramshackle tavern on the Buenos Aires waterfront full of men who have lost pieces of themselves. Morselli's characters include hopeful inventors, lodgers, performers and dreamers, drawn with a playwright's ear for dialogue.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.