Beccaria was born on March 15th 1738 into an affluent,noble family. He was educated at a traditionalist Jesuit college at Parma in Northern Italy and, after graduating, he studied Law at the University of Pavia. After completing his studies, Beccaria returned home and fell in love with a woman called Teresa Di Blasco, the daughter of an army officer. Beccaria’s father forbade him from marrying her as he believed the marriage would sully Beccaria’s noble status. Beccaria protested angrily to his father, who eventually put him under what can only be described as house arrest to dissuade him from marrying Teresa. After three months elapsed, Beccaria married Teresa and became estranged from his parents.

Beccaria seemed to be entirely uninterested in scholarly affairs. The traditional methods of education failed to inspire him. However, this changed quite dramatically when Beccaria began reading Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, which recounted the travels of two Persian noblemen travelling through France. Montesquieu’s satirical and sharply critical approach to political and religious institutions inspired Beccaria to delve further into philosophy. He then met two intellectually curious brothers, Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Pietro an economist and Alessandro a writer. Pietro was the leading figure of a short‐​lived but influential? group known as the Academy of Fists. The name was jokingly adopted by Pietro when he heard the group had garnered a reputation for having such heated debates that they were reputed to break into fistfights.

The Academy was made up of Italian intellectuals who advocated for a variety of economic, legal and social reforms. They published their ideas in a periodical named Il Cafe, or “the Coffeehouse,” modelled after Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Spectator. It was there that Beccaria published his first written work in 1762 on the monetary policy of Milan.

However, Beccaria found it hard to write. Pietro described Beccaria as a person with a great mind who was also lazy and easily discouraged. Pietro assigned Beccaria to write about criminal law. After some help from Alessandro, who had a wealth of experience of working with prisons, and some much‐​needed prodding from Pietro, Beccaria published On Crimes and Punishments at the tender age of twenty‐​six.