10 Facts About Matilde Serao

Matilde Serao was the first woman called to edit an Italian newspaper, Il Corriere di Roma and later Il Giorno.

Matilde Serao never won the Nobel Prize in Literature despite being nominated on six occasions.

Matilde Serao was born in the Greek city of Patras to an Italian father, Francesco Matilde Serao, and a Greek mother, Paolina Borely.

Matilde Serao grew up in poverty and worked as a schoolmistress, an experience later described in the preface to a book of short stories called Leggende Napolitane.

Matilde Serao first gained notoriety after publishing her short stories in Il Piccolo, a newspaper edited by Rocco de Zerbi and her first novel, Fantasia, which established her as an author capable of writing with sentiment and analytical subtleties.

Matilde Serao spent the years between 1880 and 1886 in Rome, where she wrote her next five volumes of short stories and novels, all dealing with the struggles of ordinary people, and distinguished by great accuracy of observation and depth of insight: Cuore infermo, Fior di passione, La conquista di Roma, La Virtu di checchina, and Piccole anime.

The paper was short lived, and after its demise Matilde Serao established herself in Naples where she edited Il Corriere di Napoli.

Matilde Serao established and ran her own newspaper, "Il Giorno" in 1904 until her death.

Matilde Serao was a signatory of the 1925 Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals.

Matilde Serao was one of the contributors of the Fascist women's magazine, Lidel.