.com Review Italy has long been associated with love, images of Romeo serenading Juliet, and over-sexed locals pinching tourist flesh. But another Italian love affair has been going on for just as long, namely the writers who've been enchanted with the place for centuries. Alice Powers has collected an anthology of 41 authors spanning two centuries and all of Italy. There's Lord Byron on Venice, Herman Melville on Padua, Michael Ondaatje on Tuscany, Charles Dickens on Genoa, Richard Wilbur on Rome, Mark Twain on Naples, and Calvin Trillin on Sicily, for a feast of fine literature set in glorious surroundings. Read more From Library Journal In her collection of 19th- and 20th-century British and American authors writing about Italy, Powers (The Brooklyn Reader, LJ 12/93) has chosen the somber, brooding poetry of the Romantics?Robert Browning, Byron, and Shelley?and the self-reflective contemporary verses of Joseph Brodsky, Richard Wilbur, and Charles Wright. She represents the American and British confrontation with Italian manners through two short stories (by Malamud and Wharton) and in excerpts from the fiction of Forster, James, and John Mortimer, among others. Conversely, Cahill (Wise Women, LJ 5/1/96), whose selections are exclusively by women, has included the ballads of Francesca Alexander and a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Focusing on the effect of Italy's sensual pageant on visitors' emotional and psychological makeup, she selects the fiction of Francine Prose, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Shirley Hazzard. Travel literature forms the largest segment of both anthologies. Both collections preface each entry with bio-bibliographical information, but Cahill adds, as epilog "for the literary traveler," a fascinating contemporary walking tour of the places mentioned in each selection. She also includes a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These complementary anthologies are fine additions to the travel collections of public libraries and academic collections supporting the travel literature genre.?Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., MontrealCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From the Inside Flap Comprised of short stories, novel excerpts, essays, poetry journals and letters, this work will delight anyone who loves Italy or great travel writing. Pieces include Barbara Grizzuti Harrison marveling at baroque Sicilian confections, Mary McCarthy celebrating Venice's threadbare dignity, and Henry James's Isabel Archer succumbing to the treacherous antiquities of Florence. Read more About the Author Alice Leccese Powers is the editor of the anthologies Italy in Mind and Ireland in Mind and the co-editor of The Brooklyn Reader: Thirty Writers Celebrate America’s Favorite Borough. A freelance writer and editor, she has been published in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, and many other newspapers and magazines. Powers teaches writing at the Corcoran School of Art and Georgetown University. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and three daughters. Read more
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