Luigi Capuana was born in Mineo (Catania) on 28 May 1839 to Gaetano, a wealthy landowner, and Dorotea Ragusa. He attended municipal schools in Mineo and in 1851 he enrolled in the Royal College of Bronte, which he left in 1855 for health reasons, returning to Mineo and continuing his self-taught studies there. After obtaining his license, he enrolled, in 1857, in the Faculty of Law of the Siculorum Gymnasium in Catania, which he abandoned in 1860 to take part in Garibaldi’s enterprise as secretary of the clandestine insurrectionary committee of Mineo and, later, as chancellor (municipal secretary) in the nascent civic council. Settling in Florence in 1864, he took an active part in the cultural life of the city, frequenting the Michelangelo café (where he met the Macchiaioli and, among others, became friends with T. Signorini and V. Boldini), the salons of Dall’Ongaro and Pozzolini, where he met, among others, C. Levi (by whom he was encouraged to read the works of Balzac) and, in May-June of the year 1865, his fellow countryman Giovanni Verga.

After his first critical attempts in 1865 in the Rivista italica, the following year he became dramatic critic of the newspaper La Nazione. In 1867 his first narrative attempt appeared in the Florentine newspaper Il dottor Cymbalus , which inaugurated the fantastic and science fiction vein of a very rich production of short stories also inspired by motifs and figures of Sicilian life. Famous in this sense are the collections Le appassionate (1893) and Le paesane (1894).

Returning to Sicily in 1868, he became a school inspector, then a city councilor, then mayor of Mineo: in this period he approached the idealistic philosophy of Hegel and deepened his knowledge of De Sanctis and A.C. De Meis. After a brief stay in Rome in 1875 – during which he fixed the lines of the novel Jacinta – he returned to Mineo and published his first volume of short stories: Profiles of women (1877). In 1877, also following Verga’s solicitations, he went to Milan, where he obtained the position of literary and dramatic critic of the Corriere della Sera and, on the basis of a personal reworking of naturalistic theories, began the drafting of Giacinta, destined to take on the programmatic value of manifesto of Italian verismo (1879).

In 1880 he collected his articles on Zola, Goncourt, Verga and other writers of the time in two volumes of Studies on Contemporary Literature (1880-1882). Dating back to this period of time is the brief stay in Ispica and the beginning of the writing of the novel that would make him famous twenty years later, The Marquis of Roccaverdina (originally The Marquis of Santaverdina) of 1902, set in the town of Ragusa. From 1882 to 1883 he lived in Rome and directed the Sunday Fanfulla. He spent the years until 1888 in Catania and Mineo, and finally returned to Rome, where he remained until 1901. His literary production was very rich in these years: fables and tales for children (Once upon a time, 1882; Scurpiddu, 1898; etc.) novellas (Nuove paesane, 1898; etc.) novels (Profumo, 1890; etc.). In 1898 he published Gli “ismi” contemporanei. Professor of Italian literature at the Higher Institute of Education in Rome, he deepened his friendship with D’Annunzio and met Pirandello, who was his colleague.

In 1902 he returned to Catania, to teach lexicography and stylistics at the local university. In these years he devoted himself to the writing of the novel Resignation (1907). Among his last works: Consciences (1905), In the Land of Zagara (1910), The Americans of Rabbato (1912) but also the fantastic tales, In the island of automata (1906), In the kingdom of the monkeys, Flying and The underground city (1908), The living steel (1913).

He died on 29 November 1915 in Catania.

You can consult the birth certificate on the Ancestors Portal: State Archives of Catania > Civil Status of the Mineo > Restoration > 1839

The original is preserved at the State Archives of Catania

For further information on the figure of Luigi Capuana, see the entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Italians edited by Enrico Ghidetti.