According to Wikipedia: "Matilde Serao (March 7, 1856 – 25 July 1927) was a Greek-born Italian journalist and novelist. She was the founder and editor of Il Mattino, and she also wrote several novels… Matilde Serao is in a category of her own. She was a naturalist, but her naturalism should be understood in a much wider sense than that which is generally given to it. She was a naturalist because her books reflect life with the utmost simplicity of means, sometimes with an utter neglect of means, and at the same time she is an idealist through her deep sense of the beauty and nobility which humanity can attain, and to which her writings continually aspire. All her work is truly and profoundly Italian; it is the literature of a great mass of individuals, rather than of one peculiarly accentuated individual; the joy and pain of a whole class rather than the perplexities of a unique case or type pulsates through her pages."
