Camilla Faà
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Camilla Faà di Bruno, also da Casale, also Camilla Faà Gonzaga (c. 1599 – 14 July 1662) was an Italian noble who was married secretly, briefly and morganatically to Ferdinando the Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Duke of Montferrat. Repudiated by her husband she became a nun and the sixteen page[1] memoir which she wrote in 1622 at the behest of her Mother Superior[2] has been described as the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman.[3] Her story was the subject of Paolo Giacometti’s historical drama Camilla Faa da Casale, first performed at the Teatro Nuovo, Florence on 29 October 1846.[4]