Carlo Collodi
1826–1890
Biography
Carlo Collodi was the pen name of Carlo Lorenzini, an Italian journalist, satirist and writer born in Florence in 1826. He took the name Collodi from the Tuscan town where his mother came from and where he spent much of his boyhood with his grandmother. After his schooling in Florence he worked in a bookshop, and in the 1850s and 1860s he wrote for the political newspapers of a country that was being unified. He served as a volunteer with the Tuscan army during the wars of independence, and his sketches and satirical pieces poked fun at the politics of the day.
Growing tired of politics, he turned to writing for children. His first books for young readers were Italian versions of French fairy tales, including a 1875 translation of Charles Perrault's stories. In 1880 he began a story about a wooden puppet who longed to become a real boy. It was published week by week in the children's magazine Giornale per i bambini, and in book form it became Le avventure di Pinocchio. Collodi died suddenly in Florence in 1890, at the age of sixty-three, and the story has since been translated into many languages.
Le avventure di Pinocchio is the book that keeps his name alive, and the Italian text is the one on this site. The puppet's disobedience, his gullibility and his slow, painful learning of honesty and responsibility carry the moral lessons Collodi had long wanted to teach, wrapped in the allegory he came to favour. Pinocchio Park, opened in the town of Collodi in 1956, still marks the link between the writer and the place whose name he borrowed.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino
by Carlo Collodi
The carpenter Geppetto carves a puppet from a piece of wood that laughs and cries, and the puppet runs off almost as soon as he can stand. Pinocchio lies, skips school and falls in with swindlers, a puppet master and a fairy with blue hair, in the original Italian of Collodi's…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.