Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi
1804–1873
Biography
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi was an Italian writer and politician who lived from 1804 to 1873. He was born in Livorno, the port on the Tuscan coast, and died at Cecina, a short distance along the same coast. He took part in the Risorgimento, the movement that brought Italy's states together, and his political career ran alongside his writing for most of his life.
He is best remembered for historical novels set in the Italian past, written in the manner of Walter Scott and of Alessandro Manzoni. His romances are full of strong feeling, violence and political passion, and they helped make the historical novel popular with Italian readers of the nineteenth century. His democratic politics, which came to a head in the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, brought him into conflict with the authorities, and he was imprisoned for a time.
The book on this site is Beatrice Cenci, subtitled a history of the sixteenth century and published in 1854. Its subject is a Roman noblewoman who was executed in 1599 for her part in the killing of her father, a man whose cruelty toward his children was notorious. Guerrazzi builds the real case into a novel of passion, guilt and the abuse of power, which is typical of his historical fiction.
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Books
Beatrice Cenci: Storia del secolo XVI
by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi
In late sixteenth-century Rome the brutal Count Francesco Cenci terrorises his household, and above all his daughter Beatrice. Guerrazzi turns the famous true case into a fierce romantic novel of cruelty, desperation, trial and papal justice. This edition omits one or more…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.