Vittorio Lami was born in Volterra in 1859, the son of Antonio, a professor from Livorno, philologist, translator and editor of Tyrtaeus. He graduated in literature at the University of Pisa with a dissertation on Florentine chronicles between the 13th and 14th centuries and completed his studies in Florence at the Istituto di studi superiori. In 1888, on the recommendation of Pasquale Villari he was asked by the Deputazione di storia patria per la Toscana to prepare a critical edition of the Cronica by Giovanni Villani, which he did alongside his teaching. His work of classifying the manuscripts and the materials collected was about to be presented together with a sample of the printing and of the critical apparatus, when Lami was struck by a sudden and violent illness and died in Florence at the age of only thirty-three, unable to complete his work and leaving to the Deputazione the fruits of his research.

He had already published some articles on the Cronica of Villani in the “Archivio storico italiano”. Vittorio Lami helped Isidoro Del Lungo in his edition of the Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius and related works in the third volume of the national edition, but his name disappeared in the later reprintings through the carelessness of the editors. This early and unexpected death left Antonio Favaro profoundly shocked. “I am writing to you and I do not know why, since I have nothing to say,” he confessed to Isidoro Del Lungo, “but I need to convey to you the extreme sadness that I felt for the very painful news that your card brings me. You know how highly I valued the qualities of that perfect gentleman, our poor friend Lami, and therefore I do not need to tell you how bitterly I lament his loss. I have written straightaway a few lines to the unhappy widow, not to bring her comfort but as an outlet for my sincere pain”.