Corrado De Vita

He was born in Noto but completed his studies in Naples, graduating in Literature, a pupil of the Dante scholar it:Francesco Torraca. His thesis was on Ariosto. He then moved to Milan and collaborated with La Fiera Letteraria, a cultural weekly founded and directed by Umberto Fracchia. Later he was editor of the cultural page of the newspaper it:La Tribuna.^[1] At the end of the 30s he moved to Il Giornale d'Italia for which he became a war correspondent and made a number of voyages with the Regia Marina.^{[2][better source needed]}

As a war correspondent De Vita witnessed first-hand a number of clashes with the British fleet in which the Regia Marina suffered disastrous defeats: the Battle of Calabria (July 9, 1940), the Battle of Taranto (November 12, 1940) and the Battle of Cape Matapan (March 23–29, 1941). From this experience grew his first book The Paradise of Sailors (1942), a collection of partly autobiographical short stories.^[3] In the same year, after his war period, he was hired by Corriere della Sera as deputy editor-in-chief.^[2]

During this assignment, he sometimes had some linotypists from the Corriere secretly compose the texts for the anti-fascist sheet Fronte, transporting himself the heavy type from the rotary press to be printed at the home of Albe and it:Lica Steiner, where Elio Vittorini also worked. The night of the occupation of Rome by the Germans (8 September 1943), in agreement with Vittorini, Pietro Ingrao, Celeste Negarville, Gillo Pontecorvo and it:Salvatore Di Benedetto, De Vita had the presses of the Corriere print a large number of copies of the single-sheet paper La Liberta del Popolo. Two arrest warrants were issued for him because of this and he was saved only with the help of his friend it:Raffaele Carrieri who kept him hidden in his Milanese home in via Borgospesso.^[2]