Silvio Pellico
Italian writer and poet

Silvio Pellico (Italian: [ˈsilvjo ˈpɛlliko]; 24 June 1789 – 31 January 1854) was an Italian writer, poet, dramatist and patriot active in the Italian unification. His legacy is mainly linked to his memoirs My Prisons.
Biography
Silvio Pellico was born in Saluzzo, Piedmont. He spent the earlier portion of his life at Pinerolo and Turin, under the tuition of a priest named Manavella. At the age of ten, he composed a tragedy inspired by a translation of the Ossianic poems. On the marriage of his twin sister Rosina with a maternal cousin at Lyon, he went to reside in that city, devoting himself for four years to the study of French literature. He returned to Italy in 1809 and settled in Milan, where he became part of the circle that gravitated towards Ugo Foscolo and Vincenzo Monti and included such contemporaries as Ludovico di Breme, Giovanni Berchet, and Pietro Borsieri. In 1810, he became professor of French in the Collegio degli Orfani Militari, now the Scuola Militare Teulié.
His tragedy Francesca da Rimini, staged in Milan in 1815, and published three years later, is one of the first and one of the most successful to be inspired by the famous episode in the fifth canto of Dante's Inferno. It was brought out with success by Carlotta Marchionni at Milan in 1818.
“Silvio Pellico” enters the record as italian writer and poet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Silvio, Pellico and Italian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Silvio Pellico” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Silvio, Pellico and Italian provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q435151. VIAF identifies the subject as 46781809. The Library of Congress control number is n80164757. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1789, 1854, 1809 and 1810.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Silvio Pellico”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Silvio Pellico primary sources, Silvio Pellico archive and Silvio research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Silvio Pellico”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Silvio Pellico” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.