Serao.

Serao. MATILDE, an Italian novelist, was born at Patras in Greece, on 7th March 1856, the daughter of an Italian political refugee and a Greek lady. She was brought up partly in Greece, partly in Italy, and began her literary career in 1878 by writing tales and sketches for various journals. Her fame was established in 1881 and 1883 by two ambitious romances, which, whilst giving evidence of her study of French models of the realistic school, revealed also her own high talents of observation and description. Her best books are those dealing with various phases of Neapolitan life, as Cuore Inferno (1881), Fantasia (1883; Eng. trans. 1891), Le Leggende Napoletane, Riccardo Joanna (1886), and All' Ertà Sentinella (1889, a collection of stories). Her Piccole Anime is a charming book about children, written for grown-up people who love the little ones. She has also written sympathetically of young girls and young women in the collection of stories entitled Il Romanzo della Fanciulla, and in Telegrafi dello Stato and other books. In 1887 she undertook the editorship of the influential and widely-read journal Il Corriere di Napoli.