Alba de Cespedes y Bertini

                Alba de Cespedes y Bertini, the daughter of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, was born in Rome in 1911.  She was described by Eusebio Leal Spengler as a “celebrated Cuban writer who was often consulted” in the writing of El Diario Perdido.

                She was elsewhere described as an Italian writer and one of the pioneering figures in the feminist movement.  In the 1930s she worked as a journalist for Piccolo, Epoca, and La Stampa, and wrote her first novel, L’Anima Degli Altri, in 1935.

Two of her novels, Nessuno Torna Indietro (1938) and La Fuga (1940), were banned by the fascist censors and she was imprisoned in 1935, for her anti-fascist activities, and, again, in 1943, during WW II, for her work with the partisan Radio Bari.  In 1944, she founded the literary magazine Mercurio, which published works by modern Italian writers.

                From the 1950s de Céspedes lived in Paris.  She wrote more than ten novels and two collections of poems.  Among her best-known works are The Best of Husbands, in 1949, which combines stories of male defects and female disappointments, and The Secret Diary, in 1952, a novel in which the protagonist tells of her disappointments, and blames her husband and children for stifling her.  The Secret Diary was adapted as a play in 1962 and as a television drama in 1980.  Several of her novels were reviewed in the NYT, including The Best of Husbands on November 2, 1952.  She worked in the theatre and in films, and made a notable contribution to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1955 work, Le Amiche.

In October, 1968, Alba de Céspedes attended celebrations marking the centennial of Cuba’s struggle for independence in Manzanillo, Cuba.  The event, also attended by Fidel Castro and other dignitaries, was held at the site, where on October 10, 1868, her grandfather, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, had issued the call to arms against Spain which ignited the Ten Years’ War.  She is reported to have “stepped up to the microphone to say a few words on the occasion”.

She also donated letters written by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to his wife, Ana de Quesada between 1871and 1874, when Ana was in New York, and they are, today, preserved in the National Archives in Havana.

Alba died in Paris, on November 14, 1997, and an obituary, written by James Kirkup, appeared in The Independent on November 26, 1997.