Verga, GIOVANNI,

Verga, GIOVANNI, novelist, was born at Catania in Sicily in 1840. Of his numerous novels and tales, some of which illustrate the humours and passions of country life (as La Vita dei Campi, 1880, and Novelle Rusticane, 1883, from which comes the story of Mascagni's opera, Cavalleria Rusticana), the first to be translated was The House by the Medlar Tree (by Craig, preface by Howells, New York, 1890).