LUIGI PIRANDELLO (1867 -1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer who found his first mainstream success with the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal in 1904. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. Pirandello’s works include seven collections of poetry, seven novels, hundreds of short stories, and about forty plays.
BRADFORD A. MASONI is a writer, editor, and translator who specializes in literary modernism with a particular focus on the transition from nineteenth-century literary realism into modernism. His most recent work is a scholarly study of The Outcast entitled Pirandello Proto-Modernist: A New Reading of "L’eclusa." He lives in Minnesota. DANIELA BINI is professor of Italian and comparative literature at the University of Texas, Austin, where she chaired the Department of French and Italian for eight years. She was named Cavaliere (Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana) by the president of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, in 2007.