His plans to qualify as an engineer were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I; at the end of the conflict he decided instead to embark upon a literary career, combining work as a journalist with writing fiction.

In 1929 he became editor of the magazine Italia letteraria and started to write for the Corriere della Sera; in the following year he founded the literary review Trifalco.

From 1934 he spent much of his time abroad, lecturing at the universities of Dijon and Besançon and acting as director of the institutes of Italian culture in Prague and Paris.

In the decade following he played a part in the birth of Italy's Radio 3 and directed a number of cultural programmes for the station.

Giovanni Battista Angioletti died in Santa Maria la Bruna, near Naples in 1961 at the age of 64.