Grazia Deledda is one of the most important women writers of the twentieth century. Her depiction of the primitive and isolated communities of northern Sardinia in a perceptive, intense and individual style gained her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.'The interest in La Madre lies in the presentation of sheer instinctive life. The love of the priest for the woman is sheer instinctive passion, pure and undefiled by sentiment. The instinct of direct sex is so strong and so vivid, that only the blind instinct of mother obedience, the child instinct, can overcome it.' D. H. Lawrence

Grazia Deledda was born in 1871 in Nuoro, Sardinia. The street has been renamed after her, via Grazia Deledda. Finished her formal education at 11. She published her first short story when she was 16. Publishes her first novel, Stella D'Oriente in 1890 in a Sardinian newspaper. Leaves Nuoro for the first time in 1899 and settles in Cagliari, the principal city of Sardinia. Meets the civil servant Palmiro Madesani who she marries in 1900 and they move to Rome. She writes her best work between 1903-1920 and establishes an international reputation as a novelist. Nearly all of her work in this period is set in Sardinia. Publishes Elias Portolu in 1903. La Madre is published in 1920. She wins the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. Dies in 1936 and is buried in the church of Madonna della Solitudine in Nuoro, near to where she was born.