Anna Maria Ortese

Anna Maria Ortese (June 13, 1914 – March 9, 1998) was an Italian author of novels, short stories, poetry, and travel writing. Born in Rome, she grew up between southern Italy and Tripoli, with her formal education ending at age thirteen. Her first book was issued in 1937. In 1953 her third collection won the coveted Viareggio Prize; thereafter, Ortese's stories, novels, and journalism received many of the most distinguished Italian literary awards, including the Strega and the Fiuggi. Although she lived for many years in Naples following the Second World War, she also resided in Milan, in Rome, and for most of the last twenty years of her life in Rapallo. , Ortese’s best known work in English translation, was published in 1987 as The Iguana by the American literary press McPherson & Company. , what she considered as her most important work, the novel (1975), had not been translated into English yet.
Early life
Born in Rome, she was the fifth of six children born to Beatrice "Bice" Vaccà and Oreste Ortese. Her father worked for the Italian government, and the family moved frequently. On 6 January 1933, her brother, Emanuele Carlo, with whom she was very close, died in Martinique, where his ship had docked. The need to process his death drove her to write her first poems.
Career
Her first poems were published in the magazine in 1933. Her work was well-received, and she was encouraged to write further. The following year, the same magazine published her first short story, . In 1937, Massimo Bontempelli, writer for Bompiani and Ortese's mentor, published another of her short stories, . Although this story received favorable reviews, it drew criticism from prominent literary critics Falqui and Vigorelli.
Despite her promising start, her inspiration and motivation waned. In 1939, she traveled from Florence to Venice, where she found employment as a proofreader with the local newspaper . With World War II approaching, Ortese returned to Naples, where she had once lived with her family. It was there that she was once again inspired to write. At the end of the war, Ortese worked as an editor for the magazine .
Her parents died in 1950 and 1953. During this time, she published her second and third books: the collections and . The latter consisted of short stories and reportages which depicted the abject conditions of Naples following the war; it became highly acclaimed and was awarded the Viareggio Prize. It is from the collection's opening story that the movie was adapted and presented at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
From the mid-1950s to the late 60s, Ortese traveled and wrote extensively. She returned to Milan in 1967 and wrote a novel for which she was awarded the Strega Prize.
In her later years, Ortese became more isolated until the age of seventy-five, when she moved Rapallo to live with her sister. At the age of 80, she began corresponding with Beppe Costa, who encouraged her to publish . Soon after, Ortese accepted the proposal to republish many of her earlier novels. One was translated into English by McPherson & Company in 1987, and into French by Gallimard in 1988. (An Italian feature film of , directed by Catherine McGilvray, was released in 2004.) Another topped the Italian fiction list. In 1987, a collection of her short stories, A Music Behind the Wall: Selected Stories, was published.
Death
She died peacefully at the age of 84 in her home in Rapallo in March 1998. Only after her death did her work receive international recognition and praise.
Awards
Viareggio Prize 1953 for
Strega Prize 1967 for
Fiuggi Prize 1986 for
Procida-Elsa Morante Prize 1998 for
1998 for the French edition of
Bibliography
Novels
(1965)
(1967)
(1975)
(1979)
(1993)
(1996)
Short stories
(1937)
(1950)
(1953)
Evening Descends Upon the Hills. Translated by Ann Goldstein; Jenny McPhee. London: Pushkin Press. 2018. ISBN 9781782273356.
(1958)
(1958)
(1968)
(1969)
(1987)
(1987)
(1987)
(2002) – stories originally published between 1940 and 1942
(2010) – previously unpublished stories
Two volumes of her selected short stories, translated by Henry Martin and published under the collective title A Music Behind the Wall, appeared in 1994 and 1998 from McPherson & Company.
Poems
La carrozza di Jane. Lugano: Arti Tipografiche Induno. 1988.
Il mio paese è la notte. Roma: Empirìa. 1996. ISBN 9788885303355.
La luna che trascorre. Ed. by Giacinto Spagnoletti. Roma: Empirìa. 1998. ISBN 9788885303584.
Essays and travel writing
(1983) – reportage
(1986) – articles published around 1961
(1991) – travel writings
– articles from 1945-1947
(1997) – writings from 1974 to 1989
(2011) – writings on literature and art, published between 1939 and 1994
(2016) – in defence of animals and other writings, some previously unpublished
References
Sources
Reed, Cosetta S. "Biography: Ortese, Anna Maria," N.p., 2004.
"Anna Maria Ortese", The Times Literary Supplement, 29 January 1970.
Further reading
Anna Maria Ortese: Celestial Geographies, ed. Gian Maria Annovi and Flora Ghezzo (University of Toronto Press, 2015)
Vilma De Gasperin, Loss and the Other in the Visionary Work of Anna Maria Ortese (University of Oxford Press, 2014)
Clerici Luca, Apparizione e visione. Vita e opere di Anna Maria Ortese, (in Italian), Mondadori, Milan 2022. ISBN 88-04-48937-5
1914 births
1998 deaths
Italian women poets
Writers from Rome
20th-century Italian poets
20th-century Italian women writers