[2] The novel was made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.

He had long contemplated writing a historical novel based on his great-grandfather, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, another Prince of Lampedusa.

[3] In 1954 Tomasi traveled with his cousin Lucio Piccolo, another late-in-life author, to a literary conference in San Pellegrino Terme.

[7] He finally showed a four-chapter work in progress to close associates in early 1956, corresponding roughly to the first, second, seventh, and eight chapters of the eventual novel.

On 3 March 1958, Feltrinelli contacted Tomasi di Lampedusa's widow to make arrangements to publish the novel.

[17] Most of the novel is set during the time of the Risorgimento, specifically during the period when Giuseppe Garibaldi, the leader of the famous Redshirts, swept through Sicily with his proletariat army known as The Thousand.

Prince Fabrizio finds marriage with his overly puritanical wife to be physically unsatisfying, and thus keeps a series of mistresses and courtesans.

Angelica is introduced to Palermo society at a sumptuous ball and despite her background slips easily into the role of future countess.

The equally leftist Louis Aragon vehemently disagreed, seeing it as a "merciless" criticism of that class;[18] many among the surviving Sicilian nobility certainly saw it as such, and were scandalized that one of their own could write such a thing.

The Savoyard Piedmontese are presented as naive about Southern Italy, full of plans that will never match the reality of the region,[20] while the book's main representative of the old Bourbon regime, Don Fabrizio's brother-in-law Màlvica, is a fool.

[21] In his biography of Tomasi, David Gilmour sees Tomasi as criticising the Risorgimento (Unification of Italy) "from both sides, from the viewpoints of both Gramsci ...," describing the failure of the revolutionaries to truly ally with the peasants, "... and the Bourbons," describing a unified Italy's substitution of even worse elements into the island's elite.

During the time he was writing, Tomasi stated in a letter to his friend Baron Enrico Merlo di Tagliavia that Don Fabrizio, the "'Prince of Salina is the Prince of Lampedusa, my great-grandfather Giulio Fabrizio",[a][23] but also (in a letter to Guido Lajolo) "friends who have read it say that the Prince of Salina bears an awful resemblance to myself.

In a further letter to Lajolo, after he had written more of the novel, Tomasi doubled down on the autobiographical aspect of the character: "Don Fabrizio expresses my ideas completely.

"[24] In his circumstances and actions, Tancredi also owes a lot to Giulio Fabrizio's nephew, Corrado Valguarnera, and to some of the latter's friends and associates.

[27] Despite being universally known and published in English as The Leopard, the original Italian title for the novel is Il Gattopardo, meaning "The Serval",[28] which refers to a much smaller species of wild cat found in sub-Saharan Africa.

[28] The Corbera Family: Others at Salina: Characters at Donnafugata: The novel served as the basis for a film directed by Luchino Visconti.

[33] 20th Century Fox cut the film dramatically for its original 1963 release,[34] but in 1983 Visconti's vision was re-released with English subtitles and the famous ballroom scene restored to its full 45 minute running time.

The radio play starred Tom Hiddleston as Tancredi, Hayley Atwell as Angelica, Stanley Townsend as Don Fabrizio, and Julie Legrand as Princess Stella.