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Grazia Deledda is one of the most important women writers of the twentieth century. Her depiction of the primitive and isolated communities of northern Sardinia in a perceptive, intense and individual style gained her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.
'The interest in La Madre lies in the presentation of sheer instinctive life. The love of the priest for the woman is sheer instinctive passion, pure and undefiled by sentiment. The instinct of direct sex is so strong and so vivid, that only the blind instinct of mother obedience, the child instinct, can overcome it.' D. H. Lawrence
Grazia Deledda
Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was born in Nuoro, Sardinia. The street has been renamed after her, via Grazia Deledda. She finished her formal education at 11. She published her first short story when she was 16 and her first novel, Stella D'Oriente in 1890 in a Sardinian newspaper when she was 19. Leaves Nuoro for the first time in 1899 and settles in Cagliari, where she meets the civil servant Palmiro Madesani who she marries in 1900 and they move to Rome.
Grazia Deledda writes her best work between 1903-1920 and establishes an international reputation as a novelist.
More by Grazia Deledda
M.G. Steegman
Translated by
Translated La Madre by Grazia Deledda into English under the title of The Woman and the Priest in 1922.
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