FARINA, SALVATORE. - Sardinian novelist, born at Sorso on 19 Jan. 1846, died at Milan on 15 Dec. 1918. While he was directing the Gazzetta musicale of the Casa Ricordi, one of his novels, Il tesoro di Donina (Milan 1873), secured for him a collaboration with the Nuova antologia.
Thereafter short stories and novels appeared almost uninterruptedly in that review and were subsequently issued in volumes by various publishers; and his reputation, greater than his merits, crossed the borders of his native country. F. was able to grasp the reality of bourgeois life. His world and art have been compared with those of Carlo Dickens; in fact, F. has more affinity with other Italian writers, such as De Amicis and Berril. Notable in his writings is the art of knowing how to touch the chords of the heart (Mia figlia!, 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 from them. He left a kind of autobiography, La mia giornata (Turin 1910).
Manueto Lombardi-Loti