Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE (23 December 1896 – 23 July 1957), known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (), was an Italian writer, nobleman, and the last Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo (first published posthumously in 1958), which is set in his native Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn, solitary, shy, and somewhat misanthropic aristocrat, he opened up only with a few close friends, and spent a great deal of his time reading and meditating. He said of himself as a child, "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people", and in 1954 wrote, "Of my sixteen hours of daily wakefulness, at least ten are spent in solitude."
Biography
Tomasi was born in Palermo to Giulio Maria Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, Duke of Palma di Montechiaro, Baron of Torretta, and Grandee of Spain (1868–1934), and Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca Filangieri di Cutò (1870–1946). He was fourth cousin once removed of jeweler Fulco di Verdura and first cousin of poet Lucio Piccolo. He became an only child after the death (from diphtheria) in 1897 of his sister Stefania. He was very close to his mother, a strong personality who influenced him a great deal, especially because his father was rather cold and detached. Although much of the paternal family fortune was lost even before his father's time, and another large portion was tied up in lengthy litigation, they still owned the grand Palazzo Lampedusa in Palermo, which they shared with his paternal grandparents, three bachelor uncles, and a number of servants. This was the main residence of his childhood, although he spent summers and some other periods at the Palazzo Filangeri-Cutò, his mother's family home in rural Santa Margherita di Belice.
At first his education was a bit erratic: at his eighth birthday he had already learned conversational French, but had not yet learned to read or write even his native language. Beginning in the summer of his eighth year he studied in the two family palaces with a tutor (including the subjects of literature and English), with his mother (who taught him French) and with a grandmother who read him the novels of Emilio Salgari. The palace in Santa Marghereta had an excellent library, from which Tomasi soon read voraciously. The palace at Santa Margherita had a small theatre. For two weeks every summer a troupe of traveling players rented the theatre for a nominal fee and put on a different play every night for two weeks. Tomasi saw many performances there; years later he particularly recalled seeing his first performance of Hamlet with an audience composed largely of "illiterate labourers."
In March 1911 his mother's younger sister, Princess Julia Trigona, a lady in waiting to Queen Elena, was murdered by her lover Baron Vincenzo Paternò del Cugno. The resulting scandal led the family to spend the summer in Tuscany and the autumn in Rome. That autumn, Tomasi attended the liceo classico in Rome and then continued that curriculum at the liceo in Palermo for roughly three years. In 1914-1915 he was enrolled in the Law Faculty of the University of Genoa, though it is not clear that he actually ever attended. He definitely attended law classes in Rome in early 1915. However that year he was drafted into the army. He served first in the artillery (where he became a corporal), then transferred to the infantry. Beginning in May 1917 he underwent officer training in Turin, and was sent to the front as an officer that September. When the Italians lost the Battle of Caporetto, he was well to the west of the front lines of the main battle, but was taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the chaotic retreat. He was held in a PoW camp near Vienna (and was even allowed a visit to the city at one point). As the war approached its end he succeeded in escaping and returning to Italy.
After being mustered out of the army in February 1920 as a lieutenant, he returned to Sicily, where he spent several months in a state of nervous exhaustion. After a few brief attempts at resuming his formal studies, he entered a relatively peripatetic stage of his life. Finding post-War Sicily much less to his taste than pre-War Sicily, he spent time in Genoa, Turin, Tuscany, Bologna and even Munich.