18 Facts About Umberto Fracchia

Umberto Fracchia was intensely active professionally for slightly more than two decades, between 1908 and 1930.

Umberto Fracchia began writing short stories at an early age, but built his career initially as a journalist and literary critic.

Umberto Fracchia was born in Lucca, but neither of his parents was from Tuscany.

Umberto Fracchia's father, Francesco Fracchia was a cavalry officer from Piedmont, described as a reserved character, meticulous in his work.

From her, it is reported, Umberto Fracchia inherited a "love of sweet evasion", a powerful imagination and a love of adventure, which nurtured the boys early reading.

Umberto Fracchia's mother encouraged his enthusiasm for Emilio Salgari's tales of action adventure and science fiction.

The first part of Umberto Fracchia's childhood was lived in Alessandria, an army town ever since its foundation in the twelfth century.

In 1908, aged barely 19 and before he had concluded his university course, Umberto Fracchia published his first book, a compilation of short stories entitled "Le Vergini", followed in 1910 by the publication, again in Rome, of "La parabola sceneggiata La favola dell'innocenza".

Umberto Fracchia served initially as a lieutenant in an artillery regiment and later in the navy.

Umberto Fracchia ended the war with the rank of an officer.

Directly after the armistice which put an end to the fighting on 3 November 1918, Umberto Fracchia joined the staff at "L'Idea Nazionale" as a contributing editor.

Umberto Fracchia went on to work in directorial positions successively for the fortnightly review magazine "Comoedia" and the weekly women's magazine "Novella".

The management of the magazine launched in 1925 seems to have been a similarly lonely job, but Umberto Fracchia succeeded in recruiting several top journalists as contributors, including Giovanni Battista Angioletti and Arnaldo Frateili who later became a co-director.

The times were not propitious and after two or three years during which Umberto Fracchia struggled to preserve the magazine's independence of government interference it was renamed "L'Italia letteraria" in 1927, while production was transferred to Rome.

The previous year Umberto Fracchia had presumably made himself a subject of intensified interest on the part of the authorities when in March 1927, he lined up alongside Benedetto Croce, who was already being subjected to intrusive government surveillance, to insist, in the pages of Il Baretti, on the importance of culture not becoming subservient to power politics.

Between September 1927 and July 1928 Umberto Fracchia worked briefly for the Corriere della Sera, described during these months variously as the newspaper's Paris correspondent or the director of its Paris office.

In 1928, exhausted by the events of recent years, Umberto Fracchia fulfilled a longstanding ambition and settled in Bargone, his mother's family homebase which he had come to love as a child on frequent holiday visits to his grandmother.

Umberto Fracchia had never lost touch with the place, and had probably already been involved in the extensive renovations applied to the old family home.