Author: Martin McLaughlin<br />File Type: pdf<br />Critical interest in biography and autobiography has never been higher. However, while life-writing flourishes in the UK, in Italy it is a less prominent genre. The twelve essays collected here are written against this backdrop, and address issues in biographical and autobiographical writing in Italy from the later nineteenth century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between individual lives and life-writing and the wider social and political history of Italy. The majority of essays focus on well-known writers (DAnnunzio, Svevo, Bontempelli, Montale, Levi, Calvino, Eco and Fallaci), and their varying anxieties about autobiographical writing in their work. This picture is rounded out by a series of studies of similar themes in lesser known figures the critic Enrico Nencioni, the Welsh-Italian painter Llewellyn Lloyd and Italian writers and journalists covering the Spanish Civil War.The contributors, all specialists in their fields, are Antonella Braida, Charles Burdett, Jane Everson, John Gatt Rutter, Robert Gordon, Gwyn Griffith, Peter Hainsworth, Martin McLaughlin, Gianni Oliva, Giuliana Pieri, and Jon Usher. The volume is dedicated to John Woodhouse, on his seventieth birthday, and concludes with a bibliography of his writings. **Review ...succinct [and]clear...provides a facinating glimpse into the life histories, and the shaping of the life histories, by an eclectic group of Italians. Its chapters provide useful information on the less-known and engrossing new insights into familiar canonical figures (Risa Sodi Biography 32.3 (Summer 2009), 2009) About the Author Peter Hainsworth was Professor of Italian at the University of Oxford until 2003. Martin McLaughlin is Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford.