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CANTU, CESARE (1804-1895)

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Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 221 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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CANTU, CESARE (1804-1895) , See also:Italian historian, was See also:born at Brivio in See also:Lombardy and began his career as a teacher. His first See also:literary See also:essay (1828) was a romantic poem entitled Algiso, o la Lega Lombarda (new ed., See also:Milan; 1876), and in the following See also:year he produced a Storia di See also:Como in two volumes (Como, 1829). Thedeath of his See also:father then See also:left him in See also:charge of a large See also:family, and he worked very hard both as a teacher and a writer to provide for them. His prodigious literary activity led to his falling under the suspicions of the See also:Austrian See also:police, and he was mixed up in a See also:political trial and arrested in 1833. While in See also:prison See also:writing materials were denied him, but he managed to write on rags with a tooth-pick and See also:candle See also:smoke, and thus composed the novel Margherita Pusterla (Milan, 1838). On his See also:release a year later, as he was interdicted from teaching, literature became his only resource. In 1836 the Turinese publisher, Giuseppe Pomba, commissioned him to write a universal See also:history, which his vast See also:reading enabled him to do. In six years the See also:work was completed in seventy-two volumes, and immediately achieved a See also:general popularity; the publisher made a See also:fortune out of it, and Canti'1's royalties amounted, it is said, to 300,000 lire (I2,000). Just before the revolution of 1848, being warned that he would be arrested, he fled to See also:Turin, but after the " Five Days " he returned to Milan and edited a See also:paper called La Guardia Nazionale. Between 1849 and 185o he published his Storia degli Italiani (Turin, 1855) and many other See also:works. In 1857 the See also:archduke See also:Maximilian tried to conciliate the Milanese by the promise of a constitution, and Cantu was one of the few Liberals who accepted the See also:olive See also:branch, and went about in See also:company with the archduke. This See also:act was regarded as See also:treason and caused Cantu much annoyance in after years.

He continued his literary activity after the formation of the Italian See also:

kingdom, producing See also:volume after volume until his See also:death.. For a See also:short See also:time he was member of the Italian See also:parliament; he founded the Lombard See also:historical society, and was appointed See also:superintendent of the Lombard archives. He died in .See also:March 1895. His views are coloured by strong religious and political See also:prejudice, and by a moralizing tendency, and his historical work has little See also:critical value and is for the most See also:part pure See also:book-making, although he collected a vast amount of material which has been of use to other writers. In dealing with See also:modern Italian history he is reactionary and often wilfully inaccurate. Besides the above-mentioned works he wrote Gli Eretici in Italia (Milan, 1873); Cronistoria dell' Indipendenza italiana (See also:Naples, 1872-1877); Il Conciliatore e i See also:Carbonari (Milan, 1878), &c. (L.

End of Article: CANTU, CESARE (1804-1895)

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