Sibilla Aleramo

Italian feminist best known for her autobiographical depictions of life as a woman in late 19th century Italy. Aleramo's first book, Una donna, is considered a classic of Italian literature, and the first outspokenly feminist novel written by an Italian author.

While employed at her father's factory in her teens, she befriended a local man, 10 years her senior, who raped her in the office when she was 15. Rina did not tell her parents about the event, and was instead persuaded to marry him. A year and a half later, at 17, she had her first and only child, Walter.

Her first novel followed her life. It illustrated her decision to leave her brutal husband, so her son would have a better life, and move to Rome, which she did in 1901. She cohabited for some years with Giovanni Cena, writer and journalist, who convinced her to turn her story into a fictionalized memoir (and to take on the pseudonym of Sibilla Aleramo). In 1906, Una donna, was published. She also became active in political and artistic circles, and engaged in volunteer work in the Agro Romano, the poverty-stricken countryside surrounding Rome.

In 1908, while still involved with Cena, she met Cordula "Lina" Poletti at a women's congress, and their one-year lesbian relationship was recounted in the novel Il passaggio (1919), a book in which Aleramo also famously returned to the story told in Una donna. In it, she argued that Cena had originally convinced her to slightly change her story, and she offered a different version of a few events, notably the ending.

Sibilla Aleramo would go on to be one of Italy's leading feminists. Her personal writings to Poletti have, in more recent years, been studied due to their open minded views toward homosexual relationships, as has her production in general.

She died on 13 January 1960 in Rome, after a long illness.