A late 18th and early 19th-century Italian author, poet, and political revolutionary, he is remembered for such works as Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and A Zacinto. His literary work spans the genres of Neoclassicism and Pre-Romanticism.
He was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos and later studied at the University of Padua.
He spent the last eleven years of his life in London.
He was the son of Diamantina Spathis, a Greek woman, and her Venetian husband, Andrea Foscolo.
He wrote an ode to Napoleon Bonaparte amidst the political turmoil of the late 1700s.
