Carlo Lorenzini

Carlo Collodi is the better known pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini, a journalist and writer who was born in Florence in 1826, dying there in 1890.
Up to the age of 17, he was a pupil at schools run by religious orders ; he subsequently also acquired a broad literary and musical education together with a knowledge of languages by frequenting lively cultural circles and extensive travelling. His career as a writer was launched when he was barely twenty, writing reviews for the catalogue of an important Florentine bookshop :
this activity was followed soon after by reviews of articles for the periodical "L'Italia Musicale" (Musical Italy), one of the most significant specialized periodicals in Italy at that time.
As a journalist he rose to fame within just a few years, contributing to a wide variety of periodicals throughout Italy and himself founding or directing several significant journals. One such journal was "Il lampione", which was closed down by the censors after the 1848 riots but reopened 11 years later, on the occasion of the plebiscite for annexation to Piedmont, an event that formed the prelude to the Unity of Italy. During the 1850s he extended his range of activities as a journalist to include work as a dramatist and writer, devoting particular attention to the development of opera and drama. 1856 marked his first use of the pseudonym Carlo Collodi, which he would adopt definitively to sign his books in the 1870s and 1880s.
Collodi was the village between Lucca and Pistoia where his beloved mother Angela Orzali had been born and lived prior to her marriage, and where Carlo had probably also stayed for several periods of time during his childhood.
He began writing children's books in 1876, with the publication of I racconti delle fate, an excellent translation of French literary fables (Perrault, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, Madame D'Aulnoiy).
This was followed by a series of books designed for school use, in which story-telling was blended with the presentation of basic knowledge, a formula that was quite common at the time and which Lorenzini reinterpreted with superb power of imagination and great skill in writing. Works such as Giannettino ("Johnny"), Minuzzolo ("Tiny"), L'Abbaco di Giannettino ("Johnny's Arithmetic Primer"), La Grammatica di Giannettino "(Johnny's Grammar Book"), Il Viaggio per l'Italia di Giannettino ("Johnny's Journey Through Italy"),and La Lanterna Magica di Giannettino ("Johnny's Magic Lantern") made him a pillar of the educational system in the newly-established Italian state. In 1881 he began to contribute on a regular basis to one of the first Italian periodicals for children, "Il giornale per i bambini" ("The Children's Magazine"), the first issue of which published the initial instalment of Le avventure di Pinocchio ("Pinocchio's Adventures"), which at that time was entitled "Storia di un burattino" ("Story of a puppet"). Further stories later appeared in the same periodical, such as Pipě, o lo scimiottino color di rosa (Pipě, or the little rose-coloured monkey"), a sort of continuation of Pinocchio but with a gentle tone of self-persiflage ; these stories would later be gathered together in Storie allegre ("Cheery Stories") (1887).
Collodi died suddenly in Florence in 1890, and was buried in the commemorative cemetery of the town of San Miniato al Monte. His papers were to a large extent donated by his family to the National Central Library of Florence, where they are kept to this day. His name was at firsrt remembered predominantly on account of his work as a journalist and writer of school manuals, but the success of the book he wrote purely with the intention of providing "entertainment", Pinocchio's Adventures, went from strength to strength and its literary merit has been fully recognized in the present century.