Maria Ricci Paternò Castello Maria Ricci Paternò Castello nacque a Catania nel 1845, secondo De Gubernatis, o nel 1847 secondo Carlo Villani. Ancora giovanissima perdette entrambi i genitori. Fu educata a Palermo presso una zia. Dimostrò ingegno precoce e solo quindicenne pubblicò alcune sue poesie sulla rivista «Letture di Famiglia» di Firenze, versi comunque scolastici, di maniera.
Di animo indipendente, vivace e originale, abbandonò la Sicilia appena raggiunta la maggiore età e iniziò a viaggiare per istruirsi. A Ginevra fu allieva del Vogt. A Firenze aveva intanto conosciuto il marchese Antonio Ricci che era diplomatico presso l’ambasciata di Pietroburgo. Si sposarono e per cinque anni vissero felicemente insieme a Firenze.
Pubblicò Poesie, Rosalinda, Idillio fantastico, Spigolature, Varia, Note tragiche. Il matrimonio si interruppe per dissapori che gettarono nella disperazione Maria, che sfogò nel componimento poetico le sue pene. Il marchese Antonio Ricci pubblicava il romanzo Teodora e contemporaneamente i componimenti poetici di Maria Paternò Castello venivano raccolti volume Nuove poesie (che raccoglie anche i lavori precedenti) edito da Le Monnier, che ebbe un certo successo, in quanto considerato vero e sentito.
Recensioni favorevoli su «La Libertà» del 4 luglio 1885 (“Tutto sommato le Nuove poesie della contessa Maria Ricci Paternò Castello sono un libro che fa onore al sesso femminile”) e «La Nazione» del 4 maggio 1885. Il successo non si limitò solo all’Italia, tanto che le sue poesie vennero tradotte in tedesco dal noto e stimato traduttore Paolo Heyse. Successivamente pubblicò i sonetti Fogliuzze erranti (1886) e A Vallombrosa (1895).
Born in Rome to an aristocratic family in 1840, Ersilia Caetani became an expert on ancient Rome and most particularly its history. She mastered Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, and in 1859 she married Giacomo Lovatelli, a Roman patrician, became a contessa, and lived in the Palazzo Lovatelli. In 1854 she became an honorary member of the esteemed Institute of Rome (Instituto di Correspondenza di Roma) and the German Archaeological Institute. We have to remember that she lived in a time and place before the science of Italian archaeology was established, and she was the first woman member of the National Academy of Lincei, becoming the most important archaeologist of her time. In 1879 her husband died and Lovatelli continued to be actively engaged in Roman research. She published many works with illustrations of Roman life, including ancient Roman dress, inscriptions, legends, circuses, Eleusian mysteries, tomb inscriptions, works of ancient poets and philosophers, mosaics, the topography of ancient Rome, cults, rites and festivals, ancient Roman private life, popular traditions, children’s’ games, pagan and Christian burial practices, matrimony and divorce. She was also interested in philological issues and wrote about archaeological field techniques. She fostered a salon of the most celebrated artists and intellectuals of that time who gathered together and shared their ideas at her palazzo. These included notables like Stendhal, Balzac Gogol, Liszt, and Niebhur, The contessa Ersilia Caetani Lovatelli died in 1925.
Born in Solimbergo in 1832, Anna Mander-Cicchetti was a journalist and poet. She collaborated with the magazines “Ateneo Veneto” and “Pagine Friulane”. In the early 1860s she married the Venetian historian Bartolomeo Cecchetti, director of the city archive. He was arrested and deported to Trieste for almost two months in 1866 for refusing to hand over the most precious documents of the archive to Vienna. She was in close contact with the liberal and patriotic writers Ermina Fuà Fusinato, Caterina Percoto, contributor to the magazine “Caffè Pedrocchi”, Vittoria Aganoor, Luigia Codemo and also with the headmistress of the municipal schools of Venice. In 1910 she published a collection of sonnets and poems in Milan entitled Tutta una vita (divided into three parts: Venezia, Friuli, Varie).
She was an English novelist who published under the pseudonym Roxburghe Lothian. Her two-volume work of historical fiction, Dante and Beatrice from 1282 to 1290: A Romance, was published only three weeks before her death. Her fictionalized autobiography Lizzie Lothian appeared posthumously.
She died at Bellaport Old Hall, near the village of Norton in Hales in Shropshire.
Her two-volume work of historical fiction, Dante and Beatrice from 1282 to 1290: A Romance (based on the lives of Dante Alighieri and Beatrice Portinari), was published only three weeks before her death. Reviews were mixed; The Edinburgh Review noted that the author, assumed to be a man, showed "keen appreciation of the social aspects of Florentine life at this period, with its vivid contrasts of light and shade." Lothian's "gifts of deep feeling and sympathetic fancy" combined with "careful antiquarian study" were praised, though it was admitted that the characters are "somewhat fantastical."[1]
The British Quarterly Review likewise acknowledged the book's antiquarian value as a "handbook" of the period's "manners, customs, literature, laws, religion, architecture." The biographical facts pertaining to Dante and Beatrice's lives, however, are handled with fictional licence, sometimes to the point of contradiction. The author is praised for "his" learning, productive effort, and descriptive powers, but the anonymous reviewer concludes that "dramatic imagination is altogether wanting" and "the book is a museum rather than a stage."
