Italo Svevo, one of Italy's great Modernists, was unrecognized in his own country until James Joyce befriended the writer and championed his work. His three novels, A Life, Emilio's Carnival and Zeno's Conscience, are all recognized as masterpieces of Italian literature.
William Weaver was born on July 24, 1923. During World War II, he joined the American Field Service and was sent to Africa and then to Italy as an ambulance driver. As a senior at Princeton University, he had a short story published in Harper's Bazaar. After graduation, he taught at the University of Virginia for a year before returning to Italy. He was a translator of modern Italian literature into English. He translated the works of numerous authors including Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Giorgio Bassani and Primo Levi. He also studied opera and wrote several books on the subject including The Golden Century of Italian Opera from Rossini to Puccini. He taught at Bard College in… Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in the 1990s. He died on November 12, 2013 at the age of 90.
Elizabeth Hardwick was born on July 27, 1916, in Lexington, Kentucky. Hardwick earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Kentucky, then she enrolled at Columbia University for additional study. Formerly an adjunct associate professor of English at Barnard College in New York, Hardwick has spent most of her adult life writing novels and essays. Hardwick's first novel, The Ghostly Lover, a story about a Kentucky family, was published in 1945. Since then, Hardwick has also written the novels The Simple Truth and Sleepless Nights. Her books of essays include A View of My Own, Sight-Readings: American Fiction, and Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature. Once… nominated for the National Book Award, Seduction and Betrayal focuses on American writers, especially women writers, including Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Anne Porter, among others. The founder and advisory editor of the New York Review of Books, Hardwick's works have appeared in periodicals such as The New Yorker, The London Times Literary Supplement, and Harper's. She died at the age of 91 on December 2, 2007.