Last reviewed: June 2018
Italian novelist and poet
March 7, 1785
Milan, Lombardy, Austria (now in Italy)
May 22, 1873
Milan, Italy
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni, widely rated as one of Italy’s outstanding novelists on the basis of a single book, The Betrothed, was born in Milan in 1785, presumably the son of Pietro Manzoni and his wife, Giulia Beccaria, although there is some evidence to show that he was in fact the son of Giovanni Verri, one of his mother’s lovers. Manzoni’s grandfather was Cesare Beccaria, the famous Italian criminologist. Manzoni’s mother, legally separated from Pietro Manzoni, went to Paris with a wealthy Milanese banker, Count Carlo Imbonati, in 1796. Her son was sent to various religious schools in Merate, Lugano, and Milan. His grandfather had died of a stroke in 1794, and his father took little interest in him; consequently, Alessandro was miserable and lonely at school. When his education was completed in 1801 he lived for four years with his father in Milan, where he attended lectures and enjoyed the freedom of city life. About this time he began writing poems and making the acquaintance of other young writers in Milan. Alessandro Manzoni
In 1804 he received an invitation from Carlo Imbonati to stay with him and Alessandro’s mother in Paris, but before he reached Paris Imbonati was dead. Although he had never met Imbonati, he wrote the elegy “In morte di Carlo Imbonati” in an effort to console his mother. The count’s will made Alessandro and his mother financially independent; in addition to his fortune they inherited his villa at Brusuglio, near Milan. During his stay in Paris young Manzoni met Claude Fauriel, Madame Condorcet, and others who introduced him to the new Romantic movement in French literature. He returned to Italy in 1807.
In 1808 Manzoni married Henriette Blondel, daughter of a Swiss Calvinist banker. His wife became increasingly interested in Jansenism, and in 1810, after she had joined the Catholic Church, they were remarried in a Catholic ceremony in Paris. At the time Manzoni, a rationalist, was but nominally Catholic; however, an intense emotional experience soon after his remarriage brought about a genuine conversion. His group of poems The Sacred Hymns, published during the period between 1812 and 1815, reflect his religious concerns.
The Manzonis moved to the villa at Brusuglio, where in spite of revolution, Austrian occupation, and business difficulties the author spent his remaining years. In 1820 his first tragedy, Il conte di Carmagnola, appeared. It was received with adverse criticism, although Johann Wolfgang von Goethe came to Manzoni’s defense. When Napoleon died, Manzoni wrote his most famous ode, “The Napoleonic Ode,” and followed that with another tragedy, Adelchi. His most famous work, the historical novel The Betrothed, brought him literary fame upon its publication in 1827, and Manzoni spent most of his remaining creative effort on revisions and additions to this work and in writing minor essays.
In 1833 Henriette died. Four years later he married Countess Teresa Borri-Stampa, a widow, who died in 1861. Of his six daughters, five died young; his three sons were spendthrifts, drunkards, and troublemakers, and the eldest died one month before his father. Manzoni died on May 22, 1873, two weeks after he had been injured in a fall on the steps of the church of San Fedele in Milan.