Text: James B. Reece, “Piero Maroncelli,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 312, continued:]

Piero Maroncelli (1795-1846) was born in Forli, Italy. He spent five years in Naples studying music and literature and later attended the University of Bologna. While still in his teens he became a propagandist for liberal political causes and a member of the Carbonari. In 1817 he was arrested because of the political nature of some of his writings and imprisoned for a year. Soon after his release he went to Milan, where he associated himself with the dramatist Silvio Pellico and others in spreading the principles of political liberalism, especially through contributions to the Conciliatore, a literary journal. He and some of his associates were arrested in 1820, and Maroncelli was condemned to death by the Austrian government. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and until 1830 Maroncelli was confined in the fortress of Spielberg in Austria, where for much of the period he shared a cell with Pellico. During his imprisonment Maroncelli's leg became infected and was amputated in a crude operation.

Maroncelli spent three years in Paris, where he wrote for a [page 313:] periodical conducted by Italians in exile. In 1833 he married Amelia Schneider, a member of a German opera company, and in the same year the couple came to America. They lived for a short time in Boston before moving to New York, where both gave instruction in music and Maroncelli conducted classes in foreign languages. My Prisons; Memoirs of Silvio Pellico, with Additions, and a Biographical Notice of Pellico, by Piero Maroncelli, appeared in two volumes in 1836. During the last year of his life Maroncelli suffered from insanity and blindness, caused, an autopsy indicated, by the inexpert amputation of his leg. He died on August 1, 1846, only two months after Poe's “Literati” sketch of him had appeared in Godey's.(1)

Although Maroncelli was widely known in New York, his celebrity appears to have owed more to his tragic career than to his very limited literary output. The fact that Poe included Maroncelli among his “Literati” subjects suggests that there was some personal acquaintance between the two, but of this there is no evidence other than the detailed personal data of the sketch itself. Poe wrote of Maroncelli only in the “Literati” paper, and here with a minimum of critical remark; he noted merely that his subject's essay on “Gor-Mentalism,” though “strongly tinctured with transcendentalism,” evinced “some scholarship and [page 314:] some originality.”(2)

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