Leda Bruna Rafanelli was an Italian publisher, anarchist, futurist, and prolific author.
Leda Rafanelli was born on July 4, 1880, in Pistoia, Italy. After finishing elementary school, she became an apprentice at a local printing press, where she became acquainted with the publishing world, and anarchist/socialist ideas. In 1897, she published Pensieri, a book of poems, with her brother. Around the turn of the century, her experience living briefly in Alexandria, Egypt, cemented her interest in Eastern ideas and led to her studying the Arabic language and converting to Islam. Her commitments to anarchism and Islam were lifelong.
Rafanelli moved to Florence and married Luigi Polli, an anarchist bookseller whom she met in the Chamber of Labor, iLeda Bruna Rafanelli was an Italian publisher, anarchist, futurist, and prolific author.
Leda Rafanelli was born on July 4, 1880, in Pistoia, Italy. After finishing elementary school, she became an apprentice at a local printing press, where she became acquainted with the publishing world, and anarchist/socialist ideas. In 1897, she published Pensieri, a book of poems, with her brother. Around the turn of the century, her experience living briefly in Alexandria, Egypt, cemented her interest in Eastern ideas and led to her studying the Arabic language and converting to Islam. Her commitments to anarchism and Islam were lifelong.
Rafanelli moved to Florence and married Luigi Polli, an anarchist bookseller whom she met in the Chamber of Labor, in May 1902. They founded Rafanelli Polli, a publisher of anti-military, anti-clerical, feminist pamphlets authored by Carlo Cafiero, Francesco Saverio Merlino, and Rafanelli herself. Rafanelli Polli also published the anarchist periodical La Blouse (1906–1910). She published her first novel (Sogno d'amore) in 1905. Her connection with Polli dissipated, though they remained friendly until his death in 1922. In the early 1900s, Rafanelli helped to co-found a committee to aid political victims from 1890s revolts and was targeted for distributing revolutionary and anti-military propaganda in Fusignano.
She entered a relationship with Giuseppe Monanni, an Arezzo printer who published Vir: novissima rivista di alte questioni sociali on anarcho-futurist ideas influenced by the individualism of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rafanelli and Monanni had a son, Elio Marsillo (1910–1944), whom they called Aini (Arabic for "my eyes").
Rafanelli had a friendship with Benito Mussolini prior to his rise as Italian dictator. Mussolini spoke at a 1913 commemoration of the Paris Commune as the director of Avanti!. Rafanelli wrote in praise of his oratory ability and stayed in touch via letters and visits for the next year, until his military interventionist stance became readily apparent. She later published their correspondence in Una donna e Mussolini (1946) and privately admitted her error in judging his personality
Since the 20's she worked as a fortune teller, a teacher of Arabic, and editorial work. Rafanelli continued to write for the anarchist periodical Umanità Nova. She moved to Genoa in the 1940s, where she died on September 13, 1971....more
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