
His works from this era include Gli amici di casa, a comedy in three acts performed at the Teatro Nuovo in 1856, and a novel, Un romanzo in vapore (1856). Still fervently interested in politics, Collodi launched two more newspapers and began composing works of literary criti- cism, novels, and stage plays. After the war, Collodi returned to Tuscany as a journalist where he founded Il Lampiore, a satirical political newspaper which was closed by the ruling Grand Duchy in 1849. In 1848 he enlisted to fight for Tuscany in the First Italian War of Independence. The precocious Collodi left the seminary at the age of sixteen and enrolled at the College of the Scolopi Fathers where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. Recognizing Collodi's intelligence, the Marquis's wife, the Marchesa Ginori, took an interest in the boy at a young age and assisted him in enrolling in a well-regarded seminary. His parents, Domenico Lorenzini and Angela Orzali, were domestic servants to Marquis Lorenzo Ginori Lisci.

Collodi was the eldest of ten children, though seven of his siblings died very early in life. The village of Collodi near Pescia in Tuscany where his mother was born. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATIONĬarlo Lorenzini was born in Florence, Italy, on Novemhe later adopted the pseudonym "Carlo Collodi", borrowing his nom de plume from The subject of a two-year long celebration in Italy honoring the centennial of its first publication, Pinocchio has become an icon of modern popular culture, inspiring merchandising, stage plays, motion pictures, and hundreds of new editions of the classic tale, making Collodi's titular puppet one of the most reprinted characters in the pantheon of children's literature. Perella arguing that, "no other work of Italian literature can be said to approach the popularity Pinocchio enjoys beyond Italy's linguistic frontiers." Historically, The Adventures of Pinocchio marked a turning point in Italian children's literature, moving juvenile narratives of the period away from overt didacticism and more toward the use of comedy and minimal adult intrusion. Far darker and replete with recurring themes of metamorphosis, personal evolution, and the nature of good and evil, Collodi's Pinocchio is held as one of Italy's literary national treasures, with Nicolas J. However, Collodi's original tale of a marionette child brought to life is significantly different from the Americanized version of Pinocchio that was made famous by the 1940 Walt Disney animated feature.

Since its original serialized publication in the Italian juvenile magazine Giornale per i bambini, Le Avventure di Pinocchio: La storia di un burattino (1883 The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Marionette) has emerged as one of the most iconic works of children's literature of all time.

For further information on Collodi's life and works, see CLR, Volume 5. The following entry presents criticism on Collodi's juvenile novel Le Avventure di Pinocchio: La storia di un burattino (1883 The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Marionette) through 1999. (Born Carlo Lorenzini) Italian translator and author of fairy tales, juvenile fiction, and textbooks.
