The Decameron
The novella as a literary genre began developing in the Italian literature of the early Renaissance, principally Giovanni Boccaccio, author of "The Decameron" (1353). "The Decameron" featured 100 tales (named novellas) told by ten people (seven women and three men) fleeing the Black Death, by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills in 1348. This structure was then imitated by subsequent authors, notably the French queen Marguerite de Navarre, whose "Heptaméron" (1559) included 72 original French tales and was modeled after the structure of "The Decameron".