Giuseppe Cesare Abba

Giuseppe Cesare Abba

Giuseppe Cesare Abba was born in Cairo Montenotte in 1838 and died in Brescia in 1910. From a young age he had a great passion for History, Poetry and Philosophy, and began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa, which he left, influenced by the ideas of Mazzini and Young Italy, to enlist in the cavalry and, soon after, in the army of Garibaldi, who tried to unify all of Italy. Thus, he would be part of the famous expedition to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies of the thousand red shirts (known as the Thousand), an expedition to which he later dedicated some of his best-known texts. In 1862, after the so-called Second War of Independence, he attended the University in Pisa, until 1866, when he returned as a volunteer to Garibaldi's army to fight against the Austrians. After this campaign, he settled in his town to serve as its mayor and, later, as a teacher in Faenza or Brescia, until he accepted the position of senator of the kingdom in 1910, shortly before his death and after a long period dedicated to the writing of chronicles and manuals related to his Garibaldian experiences and his great knowledge of the country. Although in his time he was best known for such ambitious books as Le Rive Della Bormida nel 1794 (1875) or Noterelle d'uno dei Mille (which had different versions and which he finally published as Da Quarto al Volturno in 1891), today perhaps they have more His brief memorial and essay texts are interesting, among others Cose vedute, Le Alpi nostre, Cose garibaldine, Ricordi e meditazioni or this Chronicle of a lost time, which ended days before his death.