Nearly forty years of sojourning in James’s beloved Italy are remembered in his 1909 travel book. Venice, Rome, Tuscany, Florence, and other cities and countrysides come under the eye of a masterfully evocative observer and guide. His infatuation with Italy did not leave him blind to the issues the country faced in this true account—but there is no doubt he felt “the luxury of loving Italy.”
Circa l’autore
Henry James (1843-1916) was born in America but after forty years in England became a British subject in 1915. A consummate prose stylist and innovator, possessed of acute psychological discernment, James took the art of the novel to rarefied heights in such masterworks as The Turn of the Screw and The Golden Bowl, helping to pioneer literary realism.