Name
San Giusto di, Luigi

Variant name
Macina Gervasio, Luisa

Gender
Female

Birth
February 4, 1865 Trieste

Death
1936 Pisa

Descriptive Note

Luigi di San Giusto was the pen name of Italian writer and journalist Luisa Macina Gervasio. Raised bilingual (German and Italian) Luisa obtained a degree in education (diploma magistrale) in Trieste where she worked as a teacher. After marrying and separating from her husband, she moved to Puglia and then Turin. In Turin she continued to teach while pursuing a career as a reporter and writer.  She wrote for literary and theatre journals, popular magazines and dailys such as Il Giornalino della Domenica and La Stampa. 

Forced by the times to use a male pseudonym for her journalistic pieces, Luisa tried to create an association for women reporters that would represent the rights of women in the profession but, in spite of the support of several male colleagues, her efforts ultimately failed.

She was an award-winning and prolific author of poetry, novels, short stories, and biographical and autobiographical pieces. Amond her publications are: Due donne  (1888), Il segreto di Donna Graziella (1888), Un vinto (1894), Nennella (1895), L'errore (1896), just to cite a few examples of her prolific fictional production. Interested in women's rights and the promotion of women authors, she also published a biography of poet Gaspara Stampa and Le memorie di Linda Murri (1905) a fictional memoir of Linda Murri, a woman condemned and then pardoned for the murder of her husband.

Luisa Macina Gervaso was also a talented translator who completed italian versions of Goethe's  Römische Elegien and Italiensche Reise. She also translated Theodor Mommsen's Römische Geschichte.

On the occasion of the Exposition of Turin she wrote about fashion in L' Esposizione di Torino: Giornale ufficiale illustrato dell'esposizione internazionale delle industrie e del lavoro 1911. Here she published a piece entitled "Torino e la moda" (June 1910: 93-95), where she presented the women of Turin as endowed with natural good taste and excellent discernment in matters of fashion in comparison to women from other countries.  Exploiting the Expositions' trypical competitiveness, San Giusto carves an autoctonous space for the Italian fashion industry separating it from the Parisian model that was still paramount in Europe.

Roles
Writers (Composers), Journalists

Related Built Environment Objects

• Palace of Fashion

Related Archival Material