Carlo Collodi was born Carlo Lorenzini in Florence, Italy, in 1826. Both of his parents were servants, his father a cook for the Ginori—an aristocratic Florentine family— and his mother a seamstress. Young Carlo received his elementary schooling in his mother’s country village; he showed such intellectual promise, however, that the nobleman of the house, Marchese Ginori, sent him to a Tuscan seminary in Colle Val d’Elsa for five years. Having no vocation for the church, Collodi completed his education with some priests in Tuscany, then found employment as a journalist and a civil servant. He meanwhile became involved in Italy’s national unification movement and fought with the Tuscan army in the 1848 war of independence from Austria. With his brother and two friends, Carlo founded and contributed to a short-lived satirical newspaper, Il lampione (The Lamppost), then became editor for a new theatrical journal (La scaramuccia). At age 30 he adopted the pseudonym Carlo Collodi, joining his given name to that of his mother’s native village. Collodi’s vast literary output included newspaper articles, plays, novels, memoirs, and—most famously—children’s books. His first children’s book, Giannettino (1877; Little Johnny) was a reworking of an earlier educational bestseller called Giannetto (by Luigi Alessandro Parravicini) about a boy’s journey around Italy.
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