Lalla Romano


Lalla Romano was an Italian novelist, poet, artist and journalist.

Life and work

Romano was born as Graziella Romano in Demonte in 1906 from a noteworthy Piedmontese family. Her great-uncle was mathematician and glottologist Giuseppe Peano. Romano was originally interested in painting. She attended the University of Turin where she studied with art historian Lionello Venturi before Cesare Pavese piqued her interest in writing. She graduated with a degree in literature then worked as a librarian and teacher. In those years she started dating Giovanni Ermiglia, a philosophy student from Sanremo, and wrote several poems dedicated to him which have been later collected together with other previous unpublished texts in Poesie per Giovanni. During World War II she joined with the Resistance. After the war she became noted for writings that drew on personal and family experiences.

Legacy

Romano continued to paint throughout her life. In 2009, a retrospective of her paintings was held in Aosta. Her former house in Milan has been converted to a museum to preserve her work.

Partial bibliography

Novels