Giuseppe Antonio Borgese

Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (12 November 1882 – 4 December 1952) was an Italian writer, journalist and literary critic.

Biography

Borgese was born in Polizzi Generosa, near Palermo (Sicily). He graduated in literature at the University of Florence in 1903.

In his early years he founded several literary reviews, including the Dannunzian Hermes (1904), and worked for newspapers such as Corriere della Sera, La Stampa and Il Mattino.

He taught German literature and aesthetics at the universities of Turin, Rome and Milan until 1931 when, due to his opposition of the Fascist regime, he was forced to move to the United States. Here he declared himself a political exile. He was the William Allan Neilson Professor at Smith College from 1932 to 1935. He was professor in the Universities of Chicago and California until the end of World War II, making friends with Thomas Mann and marrying his youngest daughter Elisabeth with whom he had two daughters, Angelica and Dominica.

He returned to Milan in 1945.

Borgese died in Fiesole in 1952.