Giovanni Verga (Cyclopedia of World Authors)
Widely considered the greatest Italian novelist after Alessandro Manzoni, Giovanni Verga (VAYR-gah) was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1840, of a family supposed to have come from Aragon in the thirteenth century. The Vergas were a family of patriots. The grandfather was an underground fighter for independence and a deputy to the first Sicilian parliament in 1812. During Giovanni’s boyhood, his mother encouraged him to read. Although he gave her credit for his decision at the age of fifteen to become a novelist, biographers point out that his teacher Pietro Abato wrote poems and novels...
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