Annie Vivanti was born on 7 April 1866 in Norwood near London, the daughter of the exiled Italian patriot Anselmo Vivanti and the German-born writer Anna Lindau. Her multicultural environment - growing up in Italy, England, Switzerland and the USA - characterised her work as much as her eccentric lifestyle. After her first successes as a poet with the collection Lirica (1890), which was praised by Giosuè Carducci, she married the Irish journalist John Chartres in 1892, with whom she lived in English-speaking countries for two decades and wrote works such as the novel The Hunt for Happiness (1896). The international career of her daughter Vivien, a violin prodigy, inspired her to write I divoratori (1911), a novel about the destructive dynamics of artistic genius, which helped her achieve a breakthrough in Italy. In works such as Vae victis! (1917), which addressed German war crimes in Belgium, or Naja tripudians (1920), a satire on the moral decadence of post-war society, she combined political commitment with literary innovation. Her life ended tragically: after the suicide of her daughter in 1941 and a conversion to Catholicism shortly before her death, she died in Turin on 20 February 1942.