TAVERNA, GIUSEPPE. - Priest and educator, born in Piacenza on 14 March 1764, died in Parma on 20 Apr. 1820.
Ordained a priest, he was a teacher in Piacenza, at the college of S. Pietro, where the twelve-year-old Pietro Giordani was among his pupils; in Brescia (1812–22), at the Peroni college; in 1825 Maria Luisa entrusted him with the Lalatta college in Brescia; when this was closed in 1831, he lived in straitened circumstances, somewhat alleviated in 1848, when the revolutionary government appointed him honorary professor of philosophy.
He was prompted to write for children by his ardent desire to educate them soundly and by his knowledge of the little journal L'ami des Enfants, published by A. Berquin. Among his works, the most notable and widely read were: Novelle morali ad istruzione dei fanciulli (Parma 1800); Racconti storici (ibid. 1803); Le prime letture dei fanciulli (ibid. 1808). All this fiction is shaped by children’s lives, by the most ordinary events of their lives, and by the family setting, and is developed with freshness of feeling and grace of expression. Even today it has not lost its beneficial effectiveness, except that its ornate, affected, and at times prolix style alienates young readers.