Giovannino Guareschi
Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi (Italian: [dʒovanˈniːno ɡwaˈreski]; 1 May 1908 – 22 July 1968) was an Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist whose best known creation is the priest Don Camillo.
Also recorded as Giovanni Guareschi · Guareschi · Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi
Giovannino Guareschi

http: image · Public domain
- Full name
- Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi.
- Born
- 1908. · Roccabianca.
- Died
- 1968. · Cervia.
- Nationality
- Italy and Kingdom of Italy.
- Occupation
- writer, journalist, film director, screenwriter, novelist and caricaturist.
- Education
- University of Parma and Liceo Classico G. D. Romagnosi.
- Known for
- La rabbia.
- Honours
- Bancarella Literary Prize.
- Languages
- Italian.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi (Italian: [dʒovanˈniːno ɡwaˈreski]; 1 May 1908 – 22 July 1968) was an Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist whose best known creation is the priest Don Camillo.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) was a caricaturist, film director and journalist, among other activities, of Italian and Italian nationality. The caricaturist was born Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi in Roccabianca and died in Cervia. Giovannino Guareschi was also known as Sette.
Giovannino Guareschi was educated at University of Parma. The caricaturist held the position of editor-in-chief.
Among the works is La rabbia. Languages used include Italian. Honours include Bancarella Literary Prize.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Giovannino Guareschi. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
original value insufficient · checked 25 September 2026
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q378639 · wikipedia · Giovannino Guareschi
In this article
Life and career
Life and career
Guareschi was born into a middle-class family in Fontanelle di Roccabianca, in the province of Parma, on 1 May 1908. He always joked about the fact that he, a big man, was baptized Giovannino, a name meaning "little John" or "Johnny". In 1926, his family went bankrupt and he could not continue his studies at the University of Parma. After working at various minor jobs, he started to write for a local newspaper, the Gazzetta di Parma. In 1929, he became editor of the satirical magazine Corriere Emiliano, and from 1936 to 1943 was the chief editor of a similar magazine called Bertoldo. In 1943, Guareschi was drafted into the army, which apparently helped him to avoid trouble with the Italian Fascist authorities. He ended up as an artillery officer. When Italy signed the armistice of Cassibile with the Allies in 1943, he was arrested as an Italian military internee and imprisoned with other Italian soldiers in camps in German-occupied Poland for almost two years, including at Stalag X-B near Sandbostel. He later wrote about this period in Diario Clandestino (My Secret Diary). After the war, Guareschi returned to Italy and in 1945 founded a monarchist weekly satirical magazine, Candido. After Italy became a republic, he supported the Christian Democracy party. He criticized and satirized the Italian Communist Party in his magazine, famously drawing a Communist as a man with an extra nostril, and coining a slogan that became very popular: "Inside the voting booth God can see you, Stalin can't." When the Communists were defeated in the 1948 Italian general election, Guareschi did not put his pen down but also criticized the Christian Democracy party. In 1950, Candido published a satirical cartoon by Carlo Manzoni poking fun at Luigi Einaudi, the then president of the Republic. The president is at the Quirinal Palace, surrounded by, instead of the presidential guard of honour (the corazzieri), giant bottles of Nebbiolo wine, which Einaudi actually produced on his land in Dogliani. Each bottle was labeled with the institutional logo. The cartoon was judged "in contempt of the President" by a court at the time. Guareschi, as the director of the magazine, was held responsible and sentenced. In 1954, Guareschi was charged with libel after he published two facsimile wartime letters from resistance leader and former prime minister Alcide De Gasperi requesting that the Allies of World War II bomb the outskirts of Rome in order to demoralize Nazi German collaborators. The legitimacy of the letters was never established by the court; after a two-month trial, it found in favour of De Gasperi. Guareschi declined to appeal the verdict and spent 409 days in Parma's San Francesco jail, and another six months on probation at his home. His most famous comic creations are his short stories, begun in the late 1940s, about the rivalry between Don Camillo, a stalwart Italian priest, and the equally hot-headed Peppone, Communist mayor of a Po River Valley village in the "Little World". These stories were dramatized on radio, television and in films, most notably in the series of films featuring Fernandel as Don Camillo. By 1956, Guareschi's health had deteriorated and he began spending time in Switzerland for treatment. In 1957, he retired as editor of Candido but remained a contributor. He died in Cervia in 1968 of a heart attack at the age of 60.
Complete English-language series of Don Camillo stories
Complete English-language series of Don Camillo stories
The Guareschi family only discovered after 1980 that the original English language publishers made unauthorised cuts in the Don Camillo stories, only publishing 132 of the original 347 Italian stories. These were subsequently translated, and the entire series of short stories published by Pilot Productions. The copyright is vested in the family, and the books published so far are as follows: No. 1: The Complete Little World of Don Camillo (2013) ISBN 978-1900064071 No. 2: Don Camillo and His Flock (2015) ISBN 978-1900064187 No. 3: Don Camillo and Peppone (2016) ISBN 978-1900064262 No. 4: Comrade Don Camillo (2017) ISBN 978-1900064330 No. 5: Don Camillo and Company (2018) ISBN 978-1900064408 No. 6: Don Camillo's Dilemma (2019) ISBN 978-1900064477 No. 7: Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail (2020) ISBN 978-1900064514 No. 8: Don Camillio and Don Chichi (2021) ISBN 978-1900064569 No. 9: Merry Christmas Don Camillo (2022) ISBN 978-1900064590 No. 10: Don Camillo of La Bassa (2023) ISBN 978-1900064651 No. 11: Ciao Don Camillo, Volume One (2024) ISBN 978-1900064675 No. 12: Ciao Don Camillo, Volume Two (2025) ISBN 978-1900064699
Filmography
Filmography
La rabbia, 1963. Co-director with Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Filmography about Don Camillo
Filmography about Don Camillo
Little World of Don Camillo – Don Camillo (1952) The Return of Don Camillo – Il ritorno di Don Camillo (1953) Don Camillo's Last Round – Don Camillo e l'onorevole Peppone (1955) Don Camillo: Monsignor – Don Camillo Monsignore... ma non troppo! (1961) Don Camillo in Moscow – Il compagno Don Camillo (1965) Don Camillo and the today's youth – Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi (1970), unfinished project Don Camillo and the today's youth – Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi (1972) The World of Don Camillo – Don Camillo (1983), remake with Terence Hill and Colin Blakely

Firma Guareschi
Giovannino Guareschi
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Roccabianca.
Birth place
Cervia.
Death place
Published English translations
The Little World of Don Camillo (1950) Don Camillo and his Flock (in US); Don Camillo and the Prodigal Son (in UK) (1952) The House That Nino Built (1953) Don Camillo's Dilemma (1954) Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail (in US); Don Camillo and the Devil (in UK) (1957) My Secret Diary (1958) Comrade Don Camillo (1964) My Home, Sweet Home (1966) A Husband in a Boarding School (1967) Duncan & Clotilda: An Extravaganza with a Long Digression (1968) Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children (in US); Don Camillo Meets Hell's Angels (in UK) (1969) The Family Guareschi: Chronicles of the Past and Present (1970)
Selected bibliography
La scoperta di Milano (1941) Il destino si chiama Clotilde (1943) Il marito in collegio (1944) Favola di natale (1945) Diario clandestino, 1943-1945 (1946) Italia provvisoria (1947) Lo zibaldino (1948) Corrierino delle famiglie (1954) Vita in famiglia (1968)
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Greenwood Publishing Group. Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Politics. 260. 1 January 2006. 978-0-313-32362-1.
- 2.Notice de personne: Guareschi, Giovanni (1908-1968). Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 7 October 2016.
- 3.Don Camillo. Easy Readers.
- 4.Perry, 19-20
- 5.Guareschi, Giovanni. The Complete Little World of Don Camillo. Pilot Productions. 240–241. 2013. 978-1900064071.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 10
- La scoperta di Milano (1941)
- Il destino si chiama Clotilde (1943)
- Il marito in collegio (1944)
- Favola di natale (1945)
- Diario clandestino, 1943-1945 (1946)
- Italia provvisoria (1947)
- Lo zibaldino (1948)
- Corrierino delle famiglie (1954)
- Vita in famiglia (1968)
- Perry, Alan R. The Don Camillo Stories of Giovanni Guareschi. University of Toronto Press. 2008.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Film memorabilia
37,225 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Giovanni RibisiPerson
- Giovanni StortiPerson
- Giovanni VeronesiPerson
- Giovanni VitrottiPerson
- Giovonnie SamuelsPerson
- Gippy GrewalPerson
- Girija ShettarPerson
- Girish KarnadPerson
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Giovannino Guareschi?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.