TUSCANY a Selection of Travel Literature, Published Between 1881 and 1925, in the Harold Acton Library
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TUSCANY A selection of travel literature, published between 1881 and 1925, in the Harold Acton Library from Francesca Alexander: Tuscan Songs, 1897 Library and Cultural Centre Lungarno Guicciardini 9 Firenze 50125 Tel: +39 055 2677 8270 Fax: +39 055 2677 8252 www.britishinstitute.it Registered charity no: 290647 This guide to a selection of books from our collection was put together by Michele Amedei, intern from the Università degli Studi di Firenze. It is one of a series of three: Tuscany, Tuscany and Beyond, Villas and Gardens. FRANCESCA ALEXANDER Tuscan Songs ISABELLE M. ANDERTON Tuscan Folk-Lore and Sketches MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL In Tuscany: Tuscan Towns, Tuscan Types and the Tuscan Tongue ADA M. HARRISON Some Tuscan Cities MAURICE HEWLETT Earthwork out of Tuscany MAURICE HEWLETT The Road in Tuscany: a Commentary KATHERINE HOOKER Byways in Southern Tuscany WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS Tuscan Cities EDWARD HUTTON A Wayfarer in Unknown Tuscany DOROTHY NEVILE LEES Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends MARY FRANCES ROBINSON Memories of Prato JANET ROSS Italian Sketches WILLIAM WETMORE STORY Vallombrosa BLANCHE STRAHAN LEMON A biography 2 Francesca Alexander, Tuscan Songs: collected, translated and illustrated by Francesca Alexander , Cambridge (Riverside Press), 1897 [AR 782.42 ALE] Francesca (her original name was Frances) Alexander was born in Boston in 1837 and died aged eighty in Florence in 1917. She was the daughter of an American portraitist and a wealthy heiress. In 1855 she moved to Florence. Francesca spent the summer in Abetone (near Pistoia) where she met Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani, a young peasant woman whom Francesca described as ‘one of the most wonderful women whom I ever knew’ (p. v). Beatrice helped Francesca to collect typical Tuscan songs that were eventually published as: Tuscan Songs . Francesca writes about the songs and hymns, saying: ‘Already the old songs are fast being forgotten; many of them it would be impossible now to find, and others are sung only by a few aged people who will soon be gone, or in some remote corners of the mountains; and in a few years they will probably be heard no more. They have served their time, and many people laugh at them now, and some have told me that I should have done better to spend my time and work on something valuable […]. Labouring people have sung them at their work, and have felt their burdens lightened; they have brightened the long winter evenings of the poor women in lonely houses high among the mountains, when they have been sitting over their fires of fir branches, with their children about them, shut in by the snow outside, and with their men all away in the Maremma’ (p. vi). The songs were described by Francesca in the original Tuscan and translated into English; each song is accompanied by Francesca’s fine drawings. These drawings represent different kinds of country flowers, drawn with great ability and naturalistic attention, small Tuscan landscapes and peasant scenes. Isabella M. Anderton, Tuscan Folk-Lore and Sketches: Together with Some Other Papers , London (Arnold Fairbairns) 1905 [C. 914.55 AND] Isabella Mary Anderton (d. 1904) lived for many years in Florence and married Rodolfo Barbieri. She is buried in the Allori cemetery. The cover of the book has a typical Art Nouveau style: on a white 3 field the title of the book is decorated with olive branches and leaves. This book is a collection of six stories ‘told me' – writes the author – ‘by various peasants during a summer stay amid the Tuscan Apenninies above Pistoia’(p. 9). Many of these stories are linked to Clementina an old peasant woman: ‘I fell ill, and, there being no nurses and no doctors, was tended by an old peasant woman, who, living alone [...], was only too glad to spend the warmth of her heart in ‘keeping me company and tending me to the best of her ability’ (p. 9). In the second part of the book Isabella Anderton writes about the cultural traditions of Tuscany, as in the chapter dedicated to the ‘florentine calcio’ in which she describes the players and their games. But she was also interested in the island of Elba. The final chapters are devoted to modern Italian poets such as Giosué Carducci and Giovanni Pascoli. Montgomery Carmichael, In Tuscany: Tuscan Towns, Tuscan Types and the Tuscan Tongue , London (John Murray), 1901 [C 914.55 CAR] As in many books relating to Italian journeys and published at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Carmichael seems to break with the tradition of the Grand Tour. In Tuscan Towns, Tuscan Types and the Tuscan Tongue Carmichael tries to open up to a new and unusual pilgrimage in Tuscany (a similar example is the book of Dorothy Nevile Lees, Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends , London [Chatto and Windus], 1907). In the first chapters Carmichael studies, something like an amateur anthropologist, some of the different types of the Tuscan people, and in the third collection of chapters, In Tuscan Towns (pp. 121-218), he attempts to explain the ways and habits of Tuscan cities. In this book there is an interesting series of photographs: some of them – maybe the most interesting – are taken by Pietro Rossini and include ‘Leghorn types’, ‘A Lavantine Trader’, ‘Water from the Public Founts’ representing two women at the entrance to a building, ‘The Policemen’ and ‘Coral Girls’. Carmichael also describes the island of Elba and its ‘Portoferraio’ (pp. 199-218) of which he traces the history. The two final sections are dedicated to ‘A Tuscan Sanctuary: Mount La Verna’ and the history of a typical Tuscan 4 sport, ‘Pallone’ (pp. 317-331), which is not like European football but is a sport similar to modern American baseball (as a document of this sport, there is also an interesting photograph by Zaccaria). from: Montgomery Carmichael In Tuscany 1901 Ada M. Harrison, Some Tuscan Cities , London (A.&C. Black Ltd.), 1924 [914.55 HAR] This book is devoted to pilgrimage in ten smaller cities in Tuscany. Ada Harrison’s itinerary moves from the north-western Tuscan cities (Pisa, Carrara, Lucca, Pistoia and Prato) to the south-eastern cities (Arezzo, Cortona, San Gimignano, Volterra and Siena). For each city she describes the story of the people she meets and the physical characteristics of the place. The author tries to trace the typical characteristics that differentiate one town from another: in Pisa, for example, she describes the characteristics of the ancient buildings. Ada Harrison often gives information about the history 5 of churches and their major artistic works but this is not strictly a guide book. The book is illustrated with a series of drawings by Robert S. Austin who often tries to portray the cities from an unusual point of view. Maurice Hewlett, Earthwork out of Tuscany being Impressions and Translations of Maurice Hewlett (1895), London (Macmillan and Co.) 1901 [914.55 HEW] Maurice Hewlett (1861-1923) was an English historical novelist. He wrote this series of brilliant short pieces dedicated to the Italian landscape and Italian places. As he writes in the preface of the second edition, ‘the book has been read as a collection of essays and stories and dialogues only pulled by the binder’s tapes’ (pp. x-xi). These essays considers some aspects of Tuscan territory. Hewlett interpreted Tuscan works of art in his own way: that is, he looked at them not only from the perspective of a simple image but from their history, their links with the place – genii locorum –, and the historical culture that produced them over the centuries: ‘In Italy it is still impossible to separate the soul and body of the soil’, he wrote (p. 5). This book, more than the others presented here, cannot be considered a travel guide, but it is useful to those who visit certain places in Tuscany attempting to locate and stimulate mutual connections between landscapes, places, the works found there and contemporary life. ‘In Italy’ – writes the author – ‘the inner secret of Italian life can be read, not in painting alone, nor poem alone, but in the swift sun, in the streets and shrouded lanes, in the golden pastures, in the plains and blue mountains; in flowery cloisters and carved church porches’ (p. 6). This special way of reading and observing Tuscany is part of a critical moment of the late nineteenth century in England and Hewlett shares this with some of the great English and American writers of his time such as, for example, Vernon Lee and Henry James. Maurice Hewlett, The Road in Tuscany: a Commentary , London (Macmillan and Co., Limited) 1904 [914.55 HEW] The Road in Tuscany is divided into two volumes. The first covers the territory to the north of Tuscany including Florence, Mugello, 6 Garfagnana and a series of a small cities. In this first volume the writer dedicates an interesting chapter to ‘the theory that the world is a garden’ (pp. 245-267) in which he proposed some theories of aesthetics based on Italian medieval thought (Saint Francis, Boccaccio and Petrarch). The second volume relates to the territory from Pisa to the smaller towns of Tuscany (Volterra, San Casciano, Poggibonsi and Siena) and that from Grosseto to Arezzo and the Casentino. For each place Maurice Hewlett traces a brief history of the art and monuments that the traveller might encounter on his pilgrimage. Each volume has illustrations by Joseph Pennell (1860- 1926) who was an engraver, a book and review illustrator and also a writer. Katherine Hooker, Byways in Southern Tuscany , New York (Charles Scribner’s Sons), 1918. [914.55 HOO] This book covers an itinerary that considers the lesser-known cities and countryside of south Tuscany (on the first page of the book there is a map of the area).