Jessie White Mario

Life & Legacy

Jessie White Mario (9 May 1832 – 5 March 1906) was an English (and naturalized Italian) writer and philanthropist. She is sometimes referred to as "Hurricane Jessie" in the Italian press.
She was a nurse to Giuseppe Garibaldi's soldiers in four wars for the Unification of Italy (Risorgimento); she researched living conditions of the poor in the slums in subterranean Naples and working conditions in Sicily's sulphur mines. She wrote copiously (in English and Italian) as both a journalist and a biographer. For four decades, as a correspondent for the American periodical The Nation from 1866 to 1906, Jessie White provided readers in the U.S. with extensive coverage on the political, social, and cultural changes unfolding in Italy.
Her most famous biography was about Giuseppe Garibaldi.