Italo Svevo (1861 - 1928) was born Ettore Schmitz into a Jewish family of Italian and German descent. He published two novels in the 1890s, A Life and As a Man Grows Older, both dismissed by the critics and ignored by the public. The disillusioned author went to work in his father's paint factory, only returning to writing after his English tutor, the young James Joyce, asked to see his novels and expressed an admiration for them. With Joyce's support he published The Confessions of Zeno to international acclaim in 1923. Just after completing his novel, The Tale of the Good Old Man and of the Lovely Young Girl, he was killed in a car crash in 1928.