v.
born Sept. 2, 1840, Catania, Sicily
died Jan. 27, 1922, Catania
Italian writer, the most important of the verismo (realist) school of novelists.
Born to a family of landowners, Verga left Sicily for the mainland, where he remained until 1893. There he developed a writing style noted for its terse accuracy and intensity of feeling. His best works include the short stories of Little Novels of Sicily (1883), the novels The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889), and the play Cavalleria rusticana (1884; "Rustic Chivalry"), which became immensely popular when it was adapted as an opera by Pietro Mascagni . His influence on the post-World War II generation of Italian Neorealist writers was particularly marked (see Neorealism ).