Born in Viareggio, Mario Tobino was awarded a degree in medicine by the University of Bologna in 1936. He then specialised in Neurology, Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine. He worked in various psychiatric hospitals, but his name in linked to Maggiano, the former insane asylum at Fregionaia in the vicinity of Lucca, where he worked from 1942 to 1980 and where he lived all his life. From the beginning, his career was distinguished by an extraordinary intermingling of literature and psychiatry, to which many of his works bear witness, such as the two novels Le libere donne di Magliano [The free women of Magliano] (Florence, 1953) and Per le antiche scale [On the ancient stairway] (Milan, 1972). More than "scientific" work, he brought about a sort of literary transfiguration of madness, substantially contributing, moreover, to the divulging and consequent greater public awareness of the problems associated with mental illness, already starting from the 1950s. In Gli ultimi giorni di Magliano [The last days of Magliano] (Milan, 1982), the writer-psychiatrist from Viareggio expressed severe criticism of the "new psychiatry" and of Law no. 180 of 1978, inspired by the concepts of Franco Basaglia (1924-1980). Tobino died on December 11, 1991 at Agrigento, where he had gone as guest of the Pirandello Prize.