Tommaso Catani

He graduated from La Grande Magnolia; a Piarist school, and, at the age of seventeen, became a Novice in the order.

He then enrolled in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Florence, graduating in 1880 and being ordained as a priest the same year.

Later, he founded the semi-monthly journal Il granello di pepe (The Peppercorn), in which he serialized several of his novels.

Natalia Ginzburg has praised his imagination and noted that the bad fates met by some of the animals paralleled human misfortunes.

In a series of books with a character named "Ugo", he introduced scientific concepts for the elementary school level.