Salvatore Quasimodo (1901–1968) was an Italian poet and novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959. During the 1930’s Quasimodo was a leader of the “Hermetic” school of poetry, however his later works chart his change from individualism toward sociality. Jack Bevan (1920–2006) was born in Blackpool and read English at Cambridge. He fought in the Italian campaign during the Second World War, and after the war returned to Cambridge. His subsequent career was in education and during this time he also worked intensively on the translation of contemporary Italian poetry, in particular that of Salvatore Quasimodo.
