novelist, short-story writer, poet, and author of popular travel books and children's stories.

Educated at the military academy at Modena, De Amicis was commissioned in the artillery. He wrote many sketches of military life for the army journal L'Italia militare and became its editor in 1867; his stories were collected in La vita militare (1868; Military Life in Italy, 1882), followed by Novelle (1872; “Short Stories”), which some critics have thought his best work. He also wrote poetry (collected in Poesie, 1880), novels, travelogues, and essays. But his most important work is the sentimental children's story Cuore (1886; 1st Eng. trans., 1887; best trans., The Heart of a Boy, 1960), written in the form of a schoolboy's diary. It was translated into more than 25 languages.