What is the best 19th-century Italian novel?

Risorgimento epics, Sicilian verismo, Trieste introspection and decadent Roman salons, all from the century that taught Italy how to write a novel.

1. 1
   I Malavoglia

   Giovanni Verga's 1881 verismo masterpiece about a Sicilian fishing family at Aci Trezza undone by one bad bargain.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Fosca

   Iginio Ugo Tarchetti's 1869 Scapigliatura novel of a soldier bound to a sickly, possessive woman, later Sondheim's Passion.
   850pts
3. 3
   I promessi sposi

   Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (1827, revised 1842), the story of Renzo and Lucia in plague-stricken Lombardy and the founding novel of modern Italian prose.
   560pts
4. 4
   Il Corsaro Nero

   Emilio Salgari's 1898 swashbuckler of a Piedmontese noble turned Caribbean pirate seeking vengeance.
   560pts
5. 5
   Il piacere

   Gabriele D'Annunzio's 1889 decadent novel of the aesthete Andrea Sperelli adrift among the salons of Rome.
   560pts
6. 6
   Storia di una capinera

   Verga's 1871 epistolary novel of a young girl forced into a convent, his first big popular success.
   560pts
7. 7
   Le confessioni d'un italiano

   Ippolito Nievo's posthumous 1867 memoir-novel of an octogenarian looking back on Italy's journey from Venetian Republic to Risorgimento.
   560pts
8. 8
   Demetrio Pianelli

   Emilio De Marchi's 1890 novel of a humble Milanese clerk who quietly sacrifices himself for his brother's family.
   485pts
9. 9
   L'innocente

   D'Annunzio's 1892 psychological novel narrated by a husband confessing to a crime born of jealousy.
   485pts
10. 10
    Ettore Fieramosca

    Massimo d'Azeglio's 1833 patriotic novel built around the 1503 Challenge of Barletta.
    397pts
11. 11
    Le avventure di Pinocchio

    Carlo Collodi's 1883 tale of the wooden puppet who longs to become a real boy, one of the most translated books ever written.
    291pts
12. 12
    Senilità

    Svevo's 1898 novel of a Trieste clerk's self-deceiving affair, championed later by James Joyce.
    291pts
13. 13
    I Viceré

    Federico De Roberto's 1894 saga of the Uzeda princes of Catania, adapting to Italian unification without changing at all.
    291pts
14. 14
    Piccolo mondo antico

    Antonio Fogazzaro's 1895 novel of a marriage tested by faith and grief on Lake Lugano under Austrian rule.
    291pts
15. 15
    Una vita

    Italo Svevo's 1892 debut about Alfonso Nitti, a bank clerk in Trieste paralysed by his own inertia.
    291pts
16. 16
    Mastro-don Gesualdo

    Verga's 1889 portrait of a peasant-born builder who climbs into wealth but never into belonging.
    0pts
17. 17
    Cuore

    Edmondo De Amicis's 1886 school-year diary of a Turin boy, the book that taught generations of Italians civic virtue.
    0pts
18. 18
    Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis

    Ugo Foscolo's 1802 epistolary novel of a young patriot's despair after Napoleon hands Venice to Austria.
    0pts

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