Fifteen Sonnets (Unabridged‪)‬

Fifteen Sonnets

By Francesco Petrarca

Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Narrated by Denis Daly

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), known in the English-speaking world simply as Petrarch, was a 14th-century Italian scholar and poet who was one of the first to use Italian as a literary language. One of his close friends was Boccaccio, who was also a pioneer in literary composition in Italian. Although Petrarch was a notable Latin scholar, and most of his works were written in that language, today he is most famous for his many sonnets in Italian, which frequently feature the superior charms of his innamorata, Laura.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was an American Unitarian pastor, Civil War veteran, abolitionist, translator, and author. After the Civil War, he devoted most of his time to literature. In later life, he became a mentor to Emily Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd and was associated with literary luminaries like Jack London, Clarence Darrow, and Upton Sinclair.