The Fatal Gift of Beauty. The Italies of British Travellers. An Annotated Anthology.

Original publisher’s sewn paperback, pictorial frontcover, thick large 8vo: xvi, 554pp., illustrations [33plts], list of illustrations, bibliography [30pp.]. This is the first anthology of British travel writing on Italy which traces the development of the genre and the history of the British perception of Italy from the Renaissance to the present.As an “anthologie raissonneé ” it presents the texts in thematic clusters and chronol.order, providing commentary and annotations for each of them and their nearly hundred authors (some of them, like Smollet, Byron, Dickens or Huxley, wellknown, others virtually unknown, amongst them unduly neglected woman writers). Further features are a substantial introd.to the travelogue and the writing of Italy, more than thirty illustrations visualizing the British experience of Italy and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Very fine copy – as new., Volume 15: Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft.