He spent his life in Turin and in Agliè (in the Canavese area), where his family owned several buildings and a large estate: Villa Il Meleto.

Of delicate health (but nevertheless practising sports such as ice-skating, cycling, and swimming), he completed primary school with mediocre results,[1] and attended Liceo classico Cavour; in 1903, after secondary school, he studied law at the University of Turin[1] but never graduated, preferring to attend the crepuscolari torinesi, i.e. literature lessons by poet Arturo Graf, who was well-liked by the young men of letters.

[1] His Leopardi-inspired pessimism was mitigated by a spiritualistic form of socialism, a combination which young Turinese intellectuals (who saw in his thought an "antidote" to the style of Gabriele D'Annunzio) particularly favoured.

[1] In May 1907 Gozzano's weak health suddenly worsened due to severe pleurisy, which forced the poet to spend the remainder of his solitary life on the Italian Riviera (mostly San Giuliano d'Albaro) and in mountain towns (Ceresole Reale, Ronco, Bertesseno, Fiery).

In the same year Gozzano's first collection of poems (written between 1904 and 1907), La via del rifugio, appeared under the imprint of the Turin publisher Streglio.

In this long poem, the author evokes his feelings for Felicita, an ordinary girl, who describes resorting to figurative art aesthetics, as a «flemish beauty»Sangirardi, Giuseppe (2013).

In this poem, the author deals with many of his work’s usual themes (his health condition, his pessimistic worldview, his yearning to visit far and exotic countries) in his trademark witty and ironic manner.

He did not get better, but the travel, together with extensive reading, inspired the texts that were to be collected and posthumously published (in 1917) under the title Verso la cuna del mondo (lit., "Towards the world's cradle").