Isabella Morra (c1520-1545/6) was born
into an impoverished aristocratic family in Southern Italy. Forced to live in
strict isolation in the family castle in Valsinni on a steep cliff above the
Ionian Sea, she devoted herself to writing a series of extraordinary poems, ‘amaro,
aspro e dolente’ (‘bitter, harsh and sorrowful’), about her longing for escape.
When she was twenty-six she was brutally murdered by three of her brothers in
an honour killing. She was buried in an unmarked grave, and her poetry was
forgotten for several hundred years.
Today Isabella Morra is regarded as a unique and
powerful voice in sixteenth-century Italian literature, a precursor of Leopardi
and a possible influence on Tasso. Benedetto Croce wrote her biography, praising
her poetry for its ‘passionate immediacy’. Two plays about her life and work
have recently been staged in Paris and in Rome. The Io Isabella International
Film festival is dedicated to her memory. This is the first complete UK edition
of Isabella di Morra’s poetry, and includes a series of poems written by
translator Caroline Maldonado about the life and brutal death of this
remarkable young woman in the context of femminicidi and honour killings
in our own time.