SOURCE: "The Last Stories of Giovanni Verga," in Italian Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer, 1957, pp. 8-14.

In the following essay, Cecchetti examines Verga's last collection of stories, Don Candeloro e Compagni, which is often overlooked by critics.

The English-speaking readers of Italian literature know of four books by Giovanni Verga: two novels—I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree) and Mastro Don Gesualdo—and two volumes of short stories—Vita dei Campi (Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories) and Novelle Rusticane (Little Novels of Sicily). These four books are unquestionably Verga's masterpieces, the ones which have placed him among the great European writers of the last century. They were all written between 1878 (the approximate date when Verga began to work seriously on I Malavoglia, after having thought about the subject for three years) and 1889, when the second and final version of Mastro Don Gesualdo was published.

In this period...