ABSTRACT
In this paper we will be looking at some details of the childhood and adolescence of Piero Sraffa collected through research based essentially on documents conserved by Sraffa himself, which can be consulted at the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Sraffa Papers: SP), as well as various other archive sources, which it has often been possible to draw upon through the kind offices of colleagues, and conversations with people who were acquainted with Piero Sraffa or who had the opportunity to hear of him through friends and relatives who knew him personally. Where no other indications are given, the evidence I present may be taken to have been assembled by myself as from 1996.2
Turin
The first details of the life of Piero Sraffa that have come to our knowledge concern his birth, recalled by Paola Pellizzi in 1978:3
approaching now is the awfully boring data of our anniversary, which your mother commented on to mine with a witty telegram: do you remember? (“Piero teaches his cousin how to come into the world without making his mother suffer too much”).
