Born in Sicily in 1867, Luigi Pirandello was the son of a prosperous sulfur merchant. The successful merchant initially sent his son to study commerce at the local technical institute, but Pirandello later transferred to an academic secondary school, where he distinguished himself in oratory and literature. As a young man, he studied at the universities of Palermo, Rome, and Bonn, receiving a degree in Romance philology in 1891. He went on to launch a literary career, publishing the collection of poems Painful Joy (Mal giocondo) in 1889 and his first novel, The Outcast (L’esclusa), in 1893. In 1894 Pirandello married Maria Antonietta Portulano, daughter of his father’s business partner; the couple settled in Rome and had three children. Pirandello continued to write, publishing his first play, If Not So, or Other People’s Reason (Se non cosi, o La ragione degli altri), in 1896. He began to achieve critical success in 1904 with the publication of his second novel, The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal). That same year, however, Pirandello suffered financial disaster when a flood destroyed his family’s sulfur mines; his wife suffered a nervous breakdown, a result at least in part of the financial disaster, from which she never fully recovered.
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