Presented here for the first time together, and many for the first time in English, are the writings that formed the genesis of "Six Characters in Search of an Author," along with a new translation of the theater masterpiece itself by Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt. Although Pirandello's best-known play is now considered a revolutionary modernist work, it did not begin as avant-garde art, but rather in the musings of a relatively unknown Sicilian living in Rome. The writings included in this volume display its genesis. The idea of characters as living beings in dialogue with their author first appears as a major theme in a short story titled "Characters," published in 1906. Pirandello did not include it in any of his collections of short stories, and it has not previously been translated into English. The interaction between characters demanding to "live" in writing and an author who rejects them would be developed in Pirandello's 1911 story "The Tragedy of a Character." In 1925, Pirandello conceived the idea of writing a novel about an author who rejects the characters who come to him begging to be put into a novel, and in a July 1917 letter to his son, he gives the novel a title: "Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore: Romanzo da fare" ("Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Novel to Be Made"). In this volume Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt provide all these materials for a complete appreciation of this masterwork. "Wonderfully fresh and readable, consistent as well as fluid, sensitive to the flows of the original language and yet smooth and precise, this new translation succeeds in bringing Pirandello's masterpiece to life once again. The introduction brilliantly captures the playwright's sense of humanity's unshakeable decency and moral dilemmas; the addition of a previously untranslated short story, "Characters," enlightens the play. English-speaking readers can now appreciate to the fullest the creative energy of a twentieth-century literary genius." - Valeria Finucci, Professor of Italian & Theater Studies, Duke University

'Six Characters in search of an Author' is a is a satirical tragicomedy play. First performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, it had a very mixed reception, with the audience shouting "Manicomio " ("Madhouse "). However, the reception improved significantly and in 1922 it played on Broadway at the Princess Theatre.The play starts with a group of actors preparing to rehearse for a Pirandello play. The rehearsal is interrupted by the arrival of six characters. One of then informs the manager that they are looking for an author. He explains that the author who created them did not finish their story, and that they therefore are unrealized characters who have not been fully brought to life. Initially, the manager goes to throw them out of the theatre, but becomes more intrigued when they start to describe their story.

"Pascal, a landowner fallen on hard times and trapped in a miserable marriage, runs away from home and wins a lot of money at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile a body has been found in the millrace of his village and it is assumed that Pascal has killed himself. Seizing what looks like a chance to create a new life, he travels to Rome under an assumed name and struggles to invent a different identity which he can inhabit. He fails, returns home, finds his wife has remarried and has to act out the role of being as it were a living ghost. All these tragic events are recounted with verve and wit and comes across clearly in Simborowski's spirited translation from the Italian."Robert Nye in The Guardian

Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece, "Six Characters in Search of an Author", presents the playwright's views about the isolation of the individual from society and from himself. This play within a play chronicles six characters as they seek an author to tell their story, and to present their real lives on stage. But do their realities make better tales than fiction?

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) is a metatheatrical drama by Luigi Pirandello. Viewed as an important work of absurdist literature, the play was a critical failure when it was first staged in Rome. Revised by its author and bolstered by successful performances in New York City, Six Characters in Search of an Author has been recognized as a pioneering examination of the nature of creativity, the relationship of the director and actors to the work of art, and the psychological stress associated with staging a theatrical production. While preparing to rehearse a new play by director Luigi Pirandello, a theatre company is interrupted with the arrival of six strangers on set. After a moment of frustration and confusion, the director is told that they are six unfinished characters whose story cannot be told without his intervention. The Father, Mother, Son, Stepdaughter, Boy, and Child refuse to leave, forcing the director to convince his actors to help them fulfill their wish. As the story begins to take shape, the characters exert more and more control over the set and the participation of the other actors, soon overtaking the director entirely. Strange and compelling, Six Characters in Search of an Author is a unique play which saw resistance from critics and theatergoers for one reason only: its methods forced them to question the nature of reality itself. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is a classic work of Italian literature reimagined for modern readers.

Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life--only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one. But when he returns to the world he left behind, it's too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried. Mattia Pascal's fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was.
An explorer of identity and its mysteries, a connoisseur of black humor, Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello is among the most teasing and profound of modern masters. "The Late Mattia Pascal," here rendered into English by the outstanding translator William Weaver, offers an irresistible introduction to this great writer's work

A young wife in a nineteenth-century Sicilian village, Marta is deeply in love with her husband Rocco and pregnant with his child. But when Rocco discovers a letter written to Marta by a would-be suitor, he falsely accuses her of infidelity and banishes her from their home. Soon the whole village turns against the supposed adulteress, setting in motion a series of tragic events that culminates in the loss of Marta’s family home and business, as well as the deaths of her father and newborn child. Plunged into poverty and treated as a social leper, with practically nothing else to lose, Marta is determined to claw her way back into a society bent on excluding her.    The Outcast is an early masterwork from Nobel Prize–winning Italian author Luigi Pirandello that combines elements of Zolaesque naturalism with emerging modernist aesthetics. This fresh English translation, the first in nearly one hundred years, showcases Pirandello’s deft play with language and his use of irony.  

In this meeting of two of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights. Tom Stoppard has reinvigorated Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece of madness and sanity. After a fall from his horse, an Italian aristocrat believes he is the obscure medieval German emperor Henry IV. After twenty years of living this royal illusion, his beloved appears with a noted psychiatrist to shock the madman back to sanity. Their efforts expose that for the past twelve years the nobleman has in fact been sane. With his mask of madness unveiled, the aristocrat launches an offensive to deflect their unwanted attention. While Pirandello's characters race linguistically about in Stoppardian dervishes, battling for the upper hand--and the greatest laughs--one question emerges: What constitutes sanity?