Caterina Marianna Percoto was born in S. Lorenzo di Soleschiano sul Natisone (UD) on 19th February 1812.

The daughter of wealthy landowners of noble origins, she was the only child of the seven children of Antonio and Teresa Zaina. She was initiated to her studies at the ‘St. Clare’ boarding school, where she remained until her adolescence, when her widowed mother, no longer able to pay the fees, was forced to withdraw her and let her continue her schooling as a self-taught pupil, also entrusting her with the education of her younger siblings.

Catherine, who was precociously dedicated to writing, made her literary debut in 1839, on the Favilla in Trieste, thanks to his friend and spiritual father Fr Pietro Comelli, who had secretly sent some of his writings to the magazine: his prose not in a mannerdescriptive, forthright, patriotic and daring, was an immediate success.

In August 1847, the novella L’Album della suocera was published in the milanese Rivista Europea, edited by Carlo Tenca. This meeting with Tenca was crucial for her, marking her debut in the literary circles of northern Italy, where Percoto – although always relegated to the Friulian countryside – participated in intense correspondence with many personalities of the cultural elite of the time.

A little later, in the 1950s, he also began to write in the Friulian language, becoming the guardian of tradition and popular fiction: in 1863, the two volumes of Racconti, a collection of Friulian tales, were published by Le Monnier.

In addition to his narrative activity, he continued his journalistic collaborations; among these, worthy of note, was the one with La Ricamatrice. Giornale di cose utili ed istruttive per le famiglie a periodical dedicated to women’s education, in which he wrote numerous short stories with a didactic-pedagogical approach. It was precisely the strand of women’s didactic literature that was the most precursor: Caterina Percoto, in fact, with liveliness and a ‘modern’ sensitivity, took to heart the theme of women’s education, in her face too often unprepared to cope with the demands of life – family and otherwise – and not infrequently with an excessively low cultural and linguistic level.

It was precisely the strand of women’s didactic literature that was the most precursor: Caterina Percoto, in fact, with liveliness and a ‘modern’ sensitivity, took to heart the theme of women’s education, in her face too often unprepared to cope with the demands of life – family and otherwise – and not infrequently with an excessively low cultural and linguistic level.

He died in Udine on 15th August 1887.

You can consult the birth certificate and the death certificate of Caterina Percoto on the Ancestors Portal: respectively Archivio di Stato di Udine > Stato civile napoleonico > San Lorenzo di Soleschiano (oggi frazione di Manzano) > 1812 and Archivio di Stato di Udine > Stato civile italiano > Manzano > 1887

The originals are kept at the State Archives of Udine

For more on the figure of Caterina Percoto, see the entry in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani edited by Adriana Chemello.