Italian Backgrounds (Ecco travels) [Paperback]

Edith Wharton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1989 | ISBN-10: 0880011858 | ISBN-13: 978-0880011853

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Edith Wharton(1862-1937) was born into a distinguished New York family and was educated privately in the United States and abroad. Among her best-known work is <I>Ethan Frome</I> (1911), which is considered her greatest tragic story, <I>The House of Mirth</I> (1905), and <I>The Age of Innocence</I> (1920), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.</P> --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Pr (April 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880011858
• ISBN-13: 978-0880011853
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,470,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful, Fascinating Travels Essays - Italy, 1901-1904, January 23, 2005

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Italian Backgrounds (Ecco travels) (Paperback)

Italian Backgrounds is comprised of nine, loosely coupled travel essays written by Edith Wharton over a four year period (1901-1904). Few readers are likely to possess her remarkable knowledge of Italian paintings, murals, frescoes, sculpture, and architecture, and in the hands of a lesser writer, these essays might easily have become tedious and overly detailed. Wharton's essays achieve a singular balance between scholarly analysis and captivating memoir.

Italian Backgrounds begins not in Italy, but at a small alpine posting-inn in Switzerland close to the Italian border. She contrasts a picturesque "toy chalet, with its air of self-conscious neatness" with the untidiness of nearby Italian villages. Despite this negative comparison, with little effort Wharton convinces us that we must take the dusty, windy road downward into that land where church steeples become campanili, liberated vines wrap themselves around mulberry trees, and far off across the hot plains domes and spires, painted walls, and sculptured alters await us.

Italian Backgrounds is not a conventional travel book. Edith Wharton's discursive essays are not arranged geographically, nor chronologically. The chapters could be read in any sequence with little loss of continuity. They might compare favorably with an extensive mural, one that draws your attention first here, then there, then elsewhere.

Despite the passage of 100 years, Italian Backgrounds should be mandatory reading to anyone planning to visit Italy, especially those with aspirations to write travel essays. Likewise, Italian Backgrounds would be ideal supplementary reading for a general art appreciation class, as well as targeted reading for art and history majors.

The chapters are titled An Alpine Posting-Inn, A Midsummer Week's Dream, The Sanctuaries of the Pennine Alps, What the Hermits Saw, A Tuscan Shrine, Sub Umbra Liliorum, March in Italy, Picturesque Milan, and Italian Backgrounds.

Ecco Travels specializes in re-publishing rare and hard-to-obtain travel writings by exceptional authors like Henry James, Charles Dickens, Andre Gide, Freya Stark, Augustus Hare, Aldous Huxley, V. S. Pritchett, Evelyn Waugh, and Edith Wharton.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars She knows her Italy!, July 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Italian Backgrounds (Ecco travels) (Paperback)

"Italian Backgrounds" by Edith Wharton is a somewhat charming travel book (a quick read) about her time in Italy as its veteran traveler. The piece is not written in a narrative, but is rather more thematically arranged. Wharton doesn't write about the Doges Palace or the Duomo, her milieu is the deeper background of the dedicated traveler.

The title comes from her theme derived from an analogy that traveling in Italy involves various areas of a painting. Italian paintings, she writes, have fore- middle- and backgrounds. The two-or three-day tourist in Venice spends all his or her time in the foreground, traipsing the well-established routes and keeping to the guidebooks. If one has more time, one can go farther into the "painting" by discovering more, and, of course, finally, as Wharton herself has done, one can dwell in the backgrounds, knowing the country well, understanding all its eras and its different brands of beauty.

Wharton is a harsh art critic, and much of the book deals with her assessments of lesser known (to me as the foreground tourist of Italy) artists and their works. My favorite chapter retold the story of her identifying some mislabeled statuary in Tuscany as belonging to a different artist and era altogether.

It was pleasant to read. For me, I am a fan of Wharton, so enjoyed this look into her experiences and the life of her mind.