Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936), Italian dramatist, novelist, short story and essay writer, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. Pirandello shares the stage with Ibsen and Brecht as one of the most influential modern dramatists of the early twentieth century. A prolific writer, he began his literary career as a novelist and writer of short stories, the best known of which is the novel The Late Mattia Pascal, published in 1904. Pirandello’s plays (nearly forty of them) won him an international reputation, with Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) providing his most enduring contribution to modern European theater. Her Husband (1911) is Pirandello’s fifth novel.

Martha King is the translator of numerous books. Mary Ann Frese Witt is Professor of French and Italian at North Carolina State University.