Horizon Information Portal

e-branch

Home

My Account/Renew Loans

Find Magazine Articles & more

Pictures from Italy / Charles Dickens ; edited with an introduction by Kate Flint.

by Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.

View full image

Penguin Books, 1998.

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Travel -- Italy.

Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography.

Italy -- Description and travel.

Penguin classics.

9780140434316 (pbk.)

xxxvii, 220 p. ; 20 cm.

Originally published: 1846.

Introduction -- A Dickens chronology -- Pictures from Italy / Charles Dickens -- Appendix. "The Italian prisoner".

In 1844, Charles Dickens took a break from novel writing to travel through Italy for almost a year and this is the illuminating account of his experiences there. He presents the country like a magic-lantern show, as vivid images ceaselessly appear before his and his readers' eyes. Italy's most famous sights are all to be found here - St Peter's in Rome, Naples with Vesuvius smouldering in the background, the fairytale buildings and canals of Venice - but Dickens's chronicle is not simply that of a tourist. Avoiding preconceptions and stereotypes, he portrays a nation of great contrasts: between grandiose buildings and squalid poverty, and between past and present, as he observes everyday life beside ancient monuments. Combining travelogue with piercing social commentary, this is a revealing depiction of an exciting and disquieting journey. In her introduction, Kate Flint discusses nineteenth-century travel writing, and Dickens's ideas about perception, memory and Italian politics. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, notes and an appendix.

Travel memoirs.

Horizon Information Portal 3.24_8902M

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal