Mario Benzing
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Mario Benzing (December 7, 1896 – November 29, 1958) was an Italian novelist and translator of German origins, often forced to sign as Mario Benzi because of the period's fascist Italian laws. Born in Como, Italy, he settled in Milan.
During the First World War, he enlisted in the Italian Army Medical Corps and in Milan he made the acquaintance of Ernest Hemingway.
Between the two World Wars he wrote in Italian several novels and biographies of historical figures, such as Messalina, Cleopatra and the Queen Christina of Sweden. As a literary translator from English, German and French, he specially devoted his work, often as first Italian translator, to Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad (first Italian translation of The Shadow Line in 1929), Jack London (first Italian translation of The Mutiny of the "Elsinore" in 1928), Arthur Schnitzler, Lewis Carroll, David Herbert Lawrence (first Italian translation of The Rainbow in 1937), Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace, Hugh Walpole, Edgar Allan Poe, Vicki Baum, Herbert George Wells (first Italian translation of The World of William Clissold in 1931), Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Ehm Welk, Eduard von Keyserling, Jakob Wassermann, Helen Hunt Jackson, Edgar Rice Burroughs and many others, showing a special sensitiveness in translating original poems in Italian verses.
