Luigi Pirandello 28 June 1867 - 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for Theatre of the Absurd. Henry IV is a man who went mad after being knocked off his horse during a masquerade. At the time he was playing the part of Henry IV, and his delusion for over twelve...

Presented here for the first time together, and many for the first time in English, are the writings that formed the genesis of "Six Characters in Search of an Author," along with a new translation of the theater masterpiece itself by Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt. Although Pirandello's best-known play is now considered a revolutionary modernist work, it did not begin as avant-garde art, but rather in the musings of a relatively unknown Sicilian living in Rome. The writings included in this volume display its genesis. The idea of characters as living beings in dialogue with their author...