Author to cry sadly over the Italian gem (5,5)

'author' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't tell whether it can be defined by this definition.

'cry sadly over the italian gem' is the wordplay.
'sadly' indicates anagramming the letters.
'over' means one lot of letters go next to another (in a down clue, some letters go over others).
'the italian' becomes 'il' (Italian for 'the').
'gem' becomes 'pearl' (pearl is a kind of gem).
'cry' with letters rearranged gives 'cyr'.
'cyr'+'il'+'pearl'='CYRIL PEARL'

'to' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?