Virgilia D'Andrea

Virgilia D'Andrea was born in the town of Sulmona, located in the Abruzzo region of Italy, on 11 February 1888. Her family died when Virgilia was a young girl; thus from the age of six she was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school. D'Andrea would remain in Catholic boarding school until her eventual graduation to become a teacher. During the course of her education D'Andrea read hundreds of books, developing an affinity for poetry and assimilating radical anarchist politics during her self-directed intellectual journey. She joined the Socialist Party of Italy as a vehicle to help advance her political beliefs. In 1917 she met leading anarchist journalist Armando Borghi at a meeting of a radical trade union which Borghi headed. D'Andrea and Borghi became companions and lovers, a relationship which flouted the moral sensibilities of the day. Although an advocate of free love, D'Andrea is believed to have maintained a monogamous commitment to Borghi throughout her life. D'Andrea was politicized by the bloodshed of World War I and she left teaching to join the movement against Italian participation in the war. By 1917 state political security forces had begun a case file on D'Andrea, whom they deemed an effective and dangerous radical anti-war agitator. Following Italy's entry into the war, both D'Andrea and Borghi were subjected to house arrest and legally confined for the duration of the war.

D'Andrea emigrated to the United States of America in the fall of 1928, settling in the city of Brooklyn, New York. In 1929 a second edition of Tormento was published in Italy, the government of which was by then firmly controlled by fascist leader Benito Mussolini. This second printing was immediately seized by the authorities, who charged that its words "excited the spirits" and inspired revolt. Citing her outspoken advocacy of the doctrine of free love, Italian authorities charged D'Andrea with "reprehensible moral behavior" and asserted that she was committed to violence, with her verses "carefully composed to instigate lawbreaking, to incite class hatred, and to vilify the army."

• Tormento. 1922. Second edition: Paris: La Fraternelle, 1929. • L'Ora di Marmaldo. Brooklyn: Libreria editrice Lavoratori Industriali del Mondo, 1925. • Torce nella Notte. New York: n.p., 1933.