CAPUANA, LUIGI (1839-1915), Italian poet and critic, was born at Mines, Sicily, on May 27, 1839. His Giacinta (1879) may be said to be the earliest of the Italian realistic novels. He wrote many other novels which found a wide public in Italy. They deal with complicated psychological problems, the most famous being Il Pro f umo (1890) and the Sicilian story, which is generally accounted his masterpiece, Il marchese di Roccaverdina (1901). Of Agrippina Solmi in this novel Croce wrote : "The passion of that humble contadina is no more mere analysis ; it is poetry." Capuana also wrote children's books, made a collection of Sicilian plays and produced some volumes of criticism. He died at Catania on Nov. 28, 1915.
See P. Vetro, Luigi Capuana, La vita e le opere (Catania, 1922).