Mastro -Don Gesualdo By Giovanni Verga A Novel. Translated by D.H. Lawrence. Verga, who died in 1922, is recognised as one of the greatest of Italian writers of fiction. 'It is a fine full tale, a fine full picture of life, with a bold beauty of its own which Mr. Lawrence must have relished greatly as he translated it' Observer

Italy has a long history of short story writing -going back to Boccaccio (d. 1375) - and most of Italy's major writers produced collections of novelle. One of the greatest exponents is Giovanni Verga. The themes of his major novels are to be found in his short stories. Verga embraced verismo, the Italian form of French naturalism, where authorial comment and description is at a minimum. He creates an atmosphere and emotions in his writing which transcend the world of his characters, mainly Sicilian fishermen and peasants, and which give it a lyrical almost epic character. Although Verga writes about a small enclosed world, his work has universal appeal, touching the heart without lecturing or sentimentalising. This volume offers a wider and more varied selection of Verga's prose than has been published in English before and has been taken from four collections published between 1876 and 1887.

D. H. Lawrence writes "Giovanni Verga, the Sicilian novelist and playwright, is surely the greatest writer of Italian fiction, after Manzoni." Originally published under the title "Novelle Rusticane," this delightful collection of stories from the Sicily of the 1800's is translated and introduced by Lawrence.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

A new translation of the stories of Giovanni Verga, the greatest Italian short-story writer since Boccaccio.

Born into a well-to-do Sicilian family, in the 1870s and 80s Verga was an active observer and habitué of Milanese salon society, but eventually he found in the everyday lives of Sicilian peasants the inspiration for his finest narratives. Love, adultery and honour are recurring themes in stories grounded in the opportunism and hardship of peasant life, set against the scorched landscapes of the slopes of Mount Etna and the Plain of Catania.

Verga's rich naturalism and originality of style have posed formidable problems for the few translators who have dared attempt him. This Penguin Classics edition by Professor McWilliam of his short stories, including Nedda, the ground-breaking narrative of Italian verismo, contains the first major versions in English since those of D. H. Lawrence in the 1920s. Two of the stories, Jeli the Herdsman and Rosso Malpelo, were described by Lawrence as among the finest stories ever written. Of Verga's Sicilian stories in general Lawrence wrote: 'The landscape will be more or less familiar to anyone who has gone in the train down the east coast of Sicily … And anyone who has once known this land can never be quite free from the nostalgia for it, not can he fail to fall under the spell of Verga's wonderful creation of it, at some point or other.'