From birth to the first writings

Youth

Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro in 1871 from a wealthy family, the fifth of seven brothers and sisters.
Immediately after primary school she began her self-taught studies and soon, very young, at the age of fifteen she wrote her first short story. At seventeen she sent her first written Sangue Sardo to the well-known magazine of the time, Sangue Sardo, asking for her publication. Various collaborations then began with local and national magazines, subsequently in 1892, with the publication of Fior di Sardegna, the real literary activity of Grazia Deledda began, which from that moment has never stopped.

Maturity

Literary Activity

In 1900 she moved to Rome with her husband and crowned one of her greatest dreams, to escape from Sardinian reality, although always very present in her stories. In fact, one of the predominant and recurring themes in her writings is precisely the Sardinian patriarchal society, a society that for geographical but also cultural reasons was disconnected from the nation, as she herself highlighted in many letters and interviews.
Often subject to criticism for her rough descriptions of reality, family problems, romantic acquaintances, and veiled autobiographies, she was a strong exponent of realism and at times of decadence.Her writing has always been characterized by a very modern key, her works in fact, they turned out to be easily adaptable to cinematic storytelling. Thus, in 1916 the silent film Cenere was shot, based on the writer's book of the same name, which unfortunately never ended due to the war.

First Italian woman

Nobel prize

In 1927 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature of 1926 (in that year there was no one with her requirements). Grazia Deledda was the first Italian woman to ever receive such an honor. Her strong and at the same time docile character of her always struck her, she presents herself like this:
I am very small, you know, I am small even in comparison with Sardinian women who are very small, but I am bold and courageous like a giant and I am not afraid of intellectual battles.

The last years of life

She died at the age of 64 in 1936 in Rome, and only in 1959 was his body transferred to his country of origin, Nuoro, where he still rests and lives forever in the history of Italian and international literature.