In his Literati Edgar Allan Poe has left for students of Italian literature and history a very precious contemporary picture of Piero Maroncelli, author of the Addizioni to Pellico's Le mie prigioni, a poet of some merit (especially if judged by American literary taste of the eighteen thirties), a musician of some distinction, and a promising composer whose career as author and musician was interrupted by the more exciting, though often distressing, vicissitudes of a political life. Maroncelli, well known to anyone who has read Pellico's Le mie prigioni, since in reality he is the hero of that book, is probably the most romantic figure—if we exclude Byron—of the early Italian Risorgimento.