The Hoax

1929

Brasch PQ4841 C482 B8 A22

London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press

Italo Svevo, pseudonym of businessman and writer Aron Ettore Schmitz (1861-1928), was born in Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His first novel, Una Vita, was published in 1893, his second, Senilità, in 1898; both were unsuccessful and Svevo subsequently gave up writing. Business dealings in England required Svevo to learn English and in 1908, he procured the services of an English language tutor called James Joyce; so began a ‘notable and long friendship between Svevo and the author of Ulysses’ (Beryl de Zoete, 1929). With Joyce’s encouragement Svevo began writing again and the Irishman was instrumental in the success of Svevo’s novel La Coscienza di Zeno (1923) in France which led him ultimately to be ‘hailed as a literary star of the first magnitude’ (de Zoete, 1929).