author
Ugo Foscolo
1778–1827
A passionate poet, novelist, and patriot of the Napoleonic age, he helped shape modern Italian literature with works full of exile, memory, and fierce feeling. Best known for The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis and Dei Sepolcri, he wrote with equal intensity about private grief and public ideals.
2 Audiobooks
Jacques Ortis; Les fous du docteur Miraglia
by Ugo Foscolo
Jacopo Ortisin Viimeiset Kirjeet
by Ugo Foscolo
About the author
Born on the island of Zakynthos in 1778 to a Venetian father and a Greek mother, he grew up between cultures and carried that sense of displacement throughout his life. He moved to Venice as a young man, embraced the political upheavals of his time, and became known not only as a writer but also as a committed patriot.
His reputation rests above all on The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, often described as the first modern Italian novel, and on the poem Dei Sepolcri, one of the best-known works of Italian literature from the early 1800s. His writing blends classical learning with restless emotion, turning love, loss, country, and personal honor into living themes rather than distant ideas.
After periods in Milan, Florence, and other Italian cities, he eventually lived in exile in England, where he died in 1827. That life of movement, disappointment, and stubborn idealism gives his work much of its enduring power: even at its most elegant, it never feels detached from real struggle.