I Promessi Sposi (PDF)

Alessandro Manzoni, (born March 7, 1785, Milan—died May 22, 1873, Milan), Italian poet and novelist whose novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) had immense patriotic appeal for Italians of the nationalistic Risorgimento period and is generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature.
After Manzoni’s parents separated in 1792, he spent much of his childhood in religious schools. In 1805 he joined his mother and her lover in Paris, where he moved in radical circles and became a convert to Voltairian skepticism. His anticlerical poem “Il trionfo della libertà” demonstrates his independence of thought. When his mother’s lover and his father died, the former left him a comfortable income, through his mother.
In 1808 he married Henriette Blondel, a Calvinist, who soon converted to Roman Catholicism, and two years later Manzoni himself returned to Catholicism. Retiring to a quiet life in Milan and at his villa in Brusuglio, he wrote (1812–15) a series of religious poems, Inni sacri (1815; The Sacred Hymns), on the church feasts of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, and a hymn to Mary. The last, and perhaps the finest, of the series, “La pentecoste,” was published in 1822.
I promessi sposi, novel by Alessandro Manzoni, published in three volumes in 1825–26; the complete edition was issued in 1827. It was initially translated into English as The Betrothed Lovers, but it was more commonly translated as simply The Betrothed. Set in early 17th-century Lombardy during the period of the Thirty Years’ War and the plague, the novel is a sympathetic portrayal of the struggle of two peasant lovers whose wish to marry is thwarted by a vicious local tyrant and the cowardice of their parish priest. A courageous friar takes up the lovers’ cause and helps them through many adventures to safety and marriage. The novel brought Manzoni immediate acclaim and had enormous patriotic appeal for Italians of the nationalistic Risorgimento period. It became a model for many later Italian writers.