Alessandro Manzoni

Biography

Alessandro Manzoni, born in Milan on 7 March 1785, turned a nation’s scattered dialects into a single heartbeat. Between 1821 and 1825 he forged, rewrote, then re-forged again the towering I promessi sposi, a tale of plague, power and peasant lovers that became Italy’s first truly national novel. Three separate manuscripts—each a crucible in which Tuscan vowels and Lombard stubbornness were melted into the gold of contemporary Italian—earned him the unofficial title of architect of the modern language.