American Novelists in Italy: The Discoverers, Allston to James (Anniversary Collection) - Hardcover

Wright, Nathalia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1512809268 ISBN 13: 9781512809268

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection, 1965

Synopsis

This is a study of the effect of their travels in Italy on thirteen American writers, among them Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W. D. Howells, and Henry James. Nathalia Wright's thesis is that Italy was a major influence on the American writers of fiction who visited that country. Some of these writers went to Italy for reasons of health. others because they were dissatisfied with the status of artists in the United States and wished the pleasure and adventure of living in a country permeated with artistic sensibility. They all had in common a love for the Italian countryside, even if their opinions of the Italian personality varied.

American Novelists in Italy is concerned with those writers who wrote between 1804 and 1870 or had begun to write by 1870. It deals with their travels in Italy and discusses in detail the treatment of Italian material in their subsequent writing. From their Italian experience issued such diverse novels as Cooper's The Water-Witch, the most lighthearted and imaginative of all Cooper's novels, Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, and James's The Golden Bowl. In addition, Dr. Wright views in detail numerous works by lesser-known authors.

Illustrated with works of nineteenth-century artists who also travelled in Italy, this book should be of interest to all students of American literature, especially since it is the first book to deal in depth with the influence of Italy on the American novel.

About this title

About the Author:

Nathalia Wright was Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of The Inner Room, Melville's Use of the Bible, and Horatio Greenough: The First American Sculptor, the last also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection
• Publication date: 1965
• ISBN 10: 1512809268
• ISBN 13: 9781512809268
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288