Alessandro Manzoni

Alessandro Manzoni was born 7 March 1785, a philosopher and poet who moved through verse and plays before finding his form. In 1827 he published The Betrothed, a sprawling novel set in 17th-century Lombardy that became a symbol of the Risorgimento - not only for its patriotic thrust but because Manzoni wrote it in a clear, modern Italian that helped knit the dialects of a divided land into something unified. He spent years revising the text to stabilize the language, and the work became a milestone in shaping the tongue Italy would speak. A proponent of Liberal Catholicism, he stood as one of the three crowns of Italian Romanticism alongside Foscolo and Leopardi, though his moral vision often diverged from theirs. He died 22 May 1873, having seen the country his prose helped imagine come to pass.