SALVATORE FARINA. — Sardinian novelist, b. at Sorso on 19 Jan. 1846, d. at Milan on 15 Dec. 1918. While he was editing the Gazzetta musicale of Casa Ricordi, one of his novels, Il tesoro di Domina (Milan 1873), secured him a collaboration with the Nuova antologia.
From that time onwards, short stories and novels followed one another almost uninterruptedly in that periodical, no longer appearing in volumes with various publishers; and his fame, greater than his merits, crossed the borders of his homeland. Farina knew how to capture the reality of bourgeois life. He has been compared to the world and art of Charles Dickens; in reality, Farina has more affinities with other Italian writers, such as De Amicis and Barti. In his writings, it is notable that he knew how to touch the chords of the heart (Mio figlio!, Milan 1879, which is his masterpiece, may truly be called a “small but eternal epic of the family”), but the Christian sense of life is absent. He left a kind of autobiography, La mia giornata (Turin 1910).