Grazia Deledda (born Sept. 27, 1871,Nuoro,Sardinia, Italy—died Aug. 15, 1936, Rome) was a novelist who was influenced by theverismo (q.v.; “realism”) school inItalian literature. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926.

Deledda married very young and moved toRome, where she lived quietly, frequently visiting her native Sardinia. With little formal schooling, at age 17 Deledda wrote her first stories, based on sentimental treatment of folklore themes. WithIl vecchio della montagna (1900; “The Old Man of the Mountain”) she began to write about the tragic effects of temptation andsin among primitive human beings.

Among her most notable works areDopo il divorzio (1902;After the Divorce);Elias Portolu (1903), the story of a mystical former convict in love with his brother’s bride;Cenere (1904;Ashes; film, 1916, starring Eleonora Duse), in which anillegitimate son causes his mother’s suicide; andLa madre (1920;The Woman and the Priest; U.S. title,The Mother), the tragedy of a mother who realizes her dream of her son’s becoming a priest only to see him yield to the temptations of the flesh. In these and others of her more than 40 novels, Deledda often used Sardinia’s landscape as ametaphor for the difficulties in her characters’ lives. The ancient ways of Sardinia often conflict with modern mores, and her characters are forced to work out solutions to theirmoral issues.Cosima, an autobiographicalnovel, was published posthumously in 1937.