Pina, the real name of La Lupa, is short for Giuseppina; Nanni is short for Giovanni; Maricchia is a form of Maria.

The only firm geographical indication in the story is that Mount Etna can be seen in the distance. St. Agrippina, prominently mentioned, was the patron saint of Mineo, which is slightly closer to Catania than Vizzini is. But there is a strong tradition that the characters live in Vizzini itself.

Verga wrote a play version of “La Lupa” in 1895, and tried to interest Puccini in composing an opera based on it. The play was first performed at the Teatro Gerbino in Turin on January 26, 1896. An opera based on the play was eventually published in 1919 (music by Pierantonio Tasca), but wasn’t performed until 1933 (in Noto, Sicily).

“L’amante di Gramigna.” When this story was first published in the February 1880 issue of the Rivista minima in Milan, it was called “L’amante di Raja”; in this case, the bandit’s name means “(the fish) skate, or ray.” When it appeared as the sixth story in the 1880 Vita dei campi, the prefatory letter to the editor of the magazine, Salvatore Farina, was abridged, while the incidents were expanded.

The letter to Farina is a major theoretical statement of the methods and aims of Verga’s verismo, and deserves close attention. The story is a fascinating psychological study of love inspired by hearsay alone; unlike analogous situations in folktales, the unseen hero is not a handsome knight or a gilded youth, but a grimy, hunted outlaw, loved for the suffering that he endures. The story, which basically consists of merely a beginning and an end, as Verga in his letter says it will, is extremely well told; the opening paragraph of the actual story, after the letter, is an absolutely brilliant piece of exposition.

The name Peppa would seem to be a short form of Giuseppa. All three geographical references are on commercial maps. We have already encountered Licodia and the river Simeto. Palagonia is about 20 miles southwest of Catania.

“Malaria.” First published in Florence in the August 14, 1881 issue of La Rassegna settimanale di Politica, Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, this became the fifth story in the 1883 volume Novelle rusticane.

The title is translated here as “Pestilential Air,” not only because that is the literal meaning (the compound noun is formulated exactly like malocchio, “evil eye,” and numerous other words beginning with mal-), but also because the true origin of the chills-and-fever disease was not yet known when the story was written, and it was attributed to the unwholesome air of certain low-lying regions. The first two paragraphs of the story make this abundantly clear.5

This is not so much of a plotted story as it is the general portrait of an entire district, with just a few victims singled out for special mention. Lentini, with its then stagnant lake, is roughly 10 miles south of Catania. Agnone is nearby, on the coast. Francofonte is roughly 5 miles southwest of Lentini. Paternò, on the other hand, is about 10 miles from Catania in a northwesterly direction. The name Turi is short for Salvaturi (Salvatore).

“La roba.” There is conflicting information about the first publication of this story. According to one trustworthy source, it was one of three recently written stories (the others being “Storia dell’asino di San Giuseppe” and “Cos’è il Re”) that Verga suggested for inclusion in the forthcoming second edition of Vita dei campi instead of another story, thematically unrelated to the rest, that the publisher, Emilio Treves, wished to insert to expand the volume. Treves is said to have considered the three new stories too good to be introduced so inconspicuously; they deserved to be saved for a brand-new volume of stories. When Vita dei campi was reprinted in 1881, that unrelated story was added to it. The source in question allows the reader to infer ex silentio that the new volume, Novelle rusticane (which eventually was published by someone else in 1883) marked the first appearance anywhere of the three stories Verga had suggested, “La roba” being the seventh story in the book. On the other hand, another source states categorically that “La roba” was first published in Florence in the December 26, 1880 issue of La Rassegna settimanale (the other two stories aren’t mentioned apart from Novelle rusticane).

Again, this is not a story with a plot (unless Mazzarò’s career is considered to have a story line). Instead, it is an elaborate character sketch, and, as such, an important “rehearsal” for Verga’s second great Sicilian novel, Mastro-don Gesualdo. In both cases, a poor lower-class man pulls himself up by his own bootstraps and becomes rich through his overpowering acquisitiveness.

Geographically, we are once more south of Catania, in the neighborhood of Lentini and Francoforte, and in the fertile Piana di Catania. A few of the little, off-the-map places mentioned in “Jeli il pastore” recur here.

“Storia dell’asino di S. Giuseppe.” Apparently this story was first published in the 1883 collection Novelle rusticane (see the comments on “La roba,” above) as the eighth item in the book.

In numerous ways, this is an animal counterpart to “Rosso Malpelo,” which itself featured a donkey prominently. Just as Rosso’s red hair, which he was born with, was superstitiously viewed, ruining his life, so the pied coat of “St. Joseph’s” donkey condemns him from birth. Rosso was emotionally and economically a prisoner of his sand quarry, but “St. Joseph’s” donkey wanders from master to master, deteriorating physically and valued at a lower price each time, in what Verga called elsewhere a via dolorosa or a via crucis, the Stations of the Cross. The religious aura becomes crystal clear when “St.