Guido da Verona

Guido da Verona (the pseudonym of Guido Verona) (7 May 1881 – Milan, 5 April 1939) was an Italian poet and novelist.

Born in Saliceto Panaro to a Jewish family, Verona started his career as a poet in 1901 with the poetry collection Commemorazione del fatto d'arme di Brichetto, followed by I frammenti d'un poema (1902) and Bianco amore (1907).[1]

He gained a larger popularity as a novelist, starting from 1911 when he published his first novel Colei che non si deve amare, considered among the most representative examples of the Italian Feuilleton.[2] He later was the most commercially successful Italian writer between 1914 and 1939:[3] particularly his novel Mimì Bluette, fiore del mio giardino, which reached 300,000 copies in 1922, an impressive run in Italy where illiteracy characterized the majority of the population.[4]

He was a signatory to the Manifesto of Fascist intellectuals in 1925; in 1929 he published a parody novel of Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, that actually was an implicit satire against fascism.[5]

He became an intellectual unpopular with the Fascist regime and marginalized after the approval of racial laws. Da Verona committed suicide in Milan at age 57.[6]