Ippolito Nievo (30 November 1831 – 4 March 1861) was an Italian writer, journalist and patriot. His Confessioni d'un italiano is widely considered the most important novel about the Italian Risorgimento.
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Nievo was born and raised in Padua, during the time the Veneto region was ruled by the Austrian Empire. His father was a lawyer. Nievo studied law at the University of Padua, but upon graduating, he refused to join his father's profession as it would imply submission to the Austrian government. He was politically inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini's thought and wanted to join the struggle for the independence of Veneto and a united Italy. In 1860 he fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, who, after having defeated the Bourbon army in Sicily and Southern Italy, gave those regions to the King of Sardinia Victor Emmanuel II. On 18 February 1861, in fulfillment of Nievo's hopes, Italy was unified under the House of Savoy. Shortly after, in March, he died in a shipwreck in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Nievo is best known for his novel Confessioni d'un italiano, also known as Confessioni d'un ottuagenario (and translated into English as The Castle of Fratta). Written between December 1857 and August 1858, the work is in twenty-three chapters. Nievo died before it could receive its final editing. Nievo himself did not find a publisher, and only in 1867, six years after the writer's death, was the novel published under the title Confessioni di un ottuagenario (Confessions of an octogenarian). The original title, by which the book is now generally known, was Confessioni d'un italiano (Confessions of an Italian), but seemed to be too "political" for the times.
The novel is both historical (its background is events in Italy in the last decades of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century) and psychological, being based upon the memories of "Carlino Altoviti", the main character and first-person narrator. It is widely considered the most important novel about the Italian Risorgimento.
Nievo wrote also poetry (Versi, 1854-55), short stories, mainly set in the countryside of Friuli, the region where Nievo lived as a young boy, and novels (Il conte pecoraio, Angelo di bontà, Il barone di Nicastro).
His political engagement was reflected in two essays: Venezia e la libertà d'Italia (1860) and Frammento sulla rivoluzione nazionale (published 1929).