Italian · 1826–1890
Carlo Lorenzini was a Florentine journalist who fought in two wars of independence, founded satirical papers, translated French fairy tales, and took his pen name from his mother's village. He came to children's writing late and grudgingly, for money. In 1881 he sent the first instalment of 'The Story of a Puppet' to a Roman children's weekly with a note telling the editor to do what he liked with 'this childishness.' He meant to kill Pinocchio off at chapter fifteen, hanged from an oak by the Fox and the Cat. Readers protested, the editor paid him to continue, and the puppet survived to become a boy. Collodi wrote textbooks, a series about a schoolboy named Giannettino, and hundreds of columns, and none of it mattered next to the marionette. He died in 1890 without seeing the book conquer the world.