Umberto Saba was born in 1883 in what is now the Italian city of Trieste but at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He received little more than basic education, but began to write poetry before he was 20. He ignored the modernist groups of the period and drew inspiration from the classics of Italian literature in poems that nevertheless treated personal themes in a contemporary way. Saba supported himself by acquiring an antiquarian bookshop, but his Jewish heritage placed him in increasing danger with the rise of Fascism. Following the German takeover of northern Italy in 1943, he and his family were forced into hiding in Florence, where they escaped detection until the Allied liberation. Full-scale national recognition came only late in his life, but in his final decade he won several top Italian literary prizes. He died in 1957.
