Six Characters in Search of an Author

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. It was Capuana who encouraged Pirandello to dedicate himself to narrative writing. In 1893, he wrote his first important work Marta Ajala, which was published in 1901 with the title L'Esclusa. In 1894, he published his first collection of short stories, Amori Senza Amore. Pirandello intensified his collaborations with newspaper editors and other journalists in magazines such as La Critica and La Tavola Rotonda in which he would publish, in 1895, the first part of the Dialogi Tra Il Gran Me e Il Piccolo Me. In 1898, with Italo Falbo and Ugo Fleres, he founded the weekly Ariel in which he published the one-act play L'Epilogo and some novellas. In 1900, he published in Marzocco some of the most celebrated of his novellas such as Lumie di Sicilia and La Paura del Sonno.