Born 1838 in Parma, Italy, an Italian patriot and writer/poet. He took part as a soldier in the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi into Sicily to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy in 1860, which he celebrated in his poem "Arrigo" and also in the book Noterelle d'uno die Mille (rendered in English as "The Diary of one of Garibaldi's Thousand.") The book is described by the London Times Literary Supplement as deserving "its reputation for its carefully sustained spontaneity, its graphic clarity, and above all for its air of genuine heroism and unaffected modesty." Abba also wrote Storia dei mille, published in 1906 for young readers, and other works about the fight for Italian unification. He died in 1910.

Sources: Everybody's Cyclopedia
http://info.greenwood.com/books/0313224/0313224463.html http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/hist/garib/garib4.html