What made a young Sardinian woman in the nineteenth century think that she could become a famous writer, especially considering the time and her position, her gender and lack of education? Yet Grazia Deledda achieved such status in the literary world that publishers in Italy vied for her fiction. Nearly seventy years after her death, her novels continue to be reprinted and translated, and critical appreciation of her work continues to grow. This - the first full length biography of Deledda in English for an adult audience - is the story of a woman who overcame obstacles that would discourage most people, and went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. The book charts her life and work from her childhood in Sardinia to her death in Rome.