Ada Negri Biography

Ada Negri (February 3, 1870 - January 11, 1945) was an Italian poet.

She was born in Lodi into an artisan family to Giuseppe Negri, and his wife Vittoria Cornalba, and became a village school-teacher. Her first book of poems, Tempeste (1891), tells the helpless tragedy of the forsaken poor, in words of vehement beauty.

Her second volume of lyrics, Fatalità, confirmed her reputation as a poet, and led to her appointment to the normal school at Milan; but her later verse, while striking in its sincerity, has been thought to suffer from a tendency to repetition and consequent mannerism.

Ada Negri was a frequent visitor to Laglio in Lake Como, where she wrote her only novel "Stella Mattutina" (Morning Star) published in 1921.

She became the first woman member of the Italian Academy in 1940.