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Italian Backgrounds
Edith Wharton's Italian Backgrounds, out of print since its original edition published in 1906, is a welcome discovery for lovers of that rich literary genre, the travel diary. Wharton, whose writings are today enjoying a revived interest, excels, as always, in detailing the milieu of her characters, here the Italian people, and that ancient country itself.
252 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1905
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About the author
Edith Wharton
1,486 books5,317 followersEdith Wharton emerged as one of America’s most insightful novelists, deftly exposing the tensions between societal expectation and personal desire through her vivid portrayals of upper-class life. Drawing from her deep familiarity with New York’s privileged “aristocracy,” she offered readers a keenly observed and piercingly honest vision of Gilded Age society.
Her work reached a milestone when she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded for The Age of Innocence. This novel highlights the constraining rituals of 1870s New York society and remains a defining portrait of elegance laced with regret.
Wharton’s literary achievements span a wide canvas. The House of Mirth presents a tragic, vividly drawn character study of Lily Bart, navigating social expectations and the perils of genteel poverty in 1890s New York. In Ethan Frome, she explores rural hardship and emotional repression, contrasting sharply with her urban social dramas.
Her novella collection Old New York revisits the moral terrain of upper-class society, spanning decades and combining character studies with social commentary. Through these stories, she inevitably points back to themes and settings familiar from The Age of Innocence. Continuing her exploration of class and desire, The Glimpses of the Moon addresses marriage and social mobility in early 20th-century America. And in Summer, Wharton challenges societal norms with its rural setting and themes of sexual awakening and social inequality.
Beyond fiction, Wharton contributed compelling nonfiction and travel writing. The Decoration of Houses reflects her eye for design and architecture; Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort presents a compelling account of her wartime observations. As editor of The Book of the Homeless, she curated a moving, international collaboration in support of war refugees.
Wharton’s influence extended beyond writing. She designed her own country estate, The Mount, a testament to her architectural sensibility and aesthetic vision. The Mount now stands as an educational museum celebrating her legacy.
Throughout her career, Wharton maintained friendships and artistic exchanges with luminaries such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Theodore Roosevelt—reflecting her status as a respected and connected cultural figure.
Her literary legacy also includes multiple Nobel Prize nominations, underscoring her international recognition. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once.
In sum, Edith Wharton remains celebrated for her unflinching, elegant prose, her psychological acuity, and her capacity to illuminate the unspoken constraints of society—from the glittering ballrooms of New York to quieter, more remote settings. Her wide-ranging work—novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, travel writing, essays—offers cultural insight, enduring emotional depth, and a piercing critique of the customs she both inhabited and dissected.
Her work reached a milestone when she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded for The Age of Innocence. This novel highlights the constraining rituals of 1870s New York society and remains a defining portrait of elegance laced with regret.
Wharton’s literary achievements span a wide canvas. The House of Mirth presents a tragic, vividly drawn character study of Lily Bart, navigating social expectations and the perils of genteel poverty in 1890s New York. In Ethan Frome, she explores rural hardship and emotional repression, contrasting sharply with her urban social dramas.
Her novella collection Old New York revisits the moral terrain of upper-class society, spanning decades and combining character studies with social commentary. Through these stories, she inevitably points back to themes and settings familiar from The Age of Innocence. Continuing her exploration of class and desire, The Glimpses of the Moon addresses marriage and social mobility in early 20th-century America. And in Summer, Wharton challenges societal norms with its rural setting and themes of sexual awakening and social inequality.
Beyond fiction, Wharton contributed compelling nonfiction and travel writing. The Decoration of Houses reflects her eye for design and architecture; Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort presents a compelling account of her wartime observations. As editor of The Book of the Homeless, she curated a moving, international collaboration in support of war refugees.
Wharton’s influence extended beyond writing. She designed her own country estate, The Mount, a testament to her architectural sensibility and aesthetic vision. The Mount now stands as an educational museum celebrating her legacy.
Throughout her career, Wharton maintained friendships and artistic exchanges with luminaries such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Theodore Roosevelt—reflecting her status as a respected and connected cultural figure.
Her literary legacy also includes multiple Nobel Prize nominations, underscoring her international recognition. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once.
In sum, Edith Wharton remains celebrated for her unflinching, elegant prose, her psychological acuity, and her capacity to illuminate the unspoken constraints of society—from the glittering ballrooms of New York to quieter, more remote settings. Her wide-ranging work—novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, travel writing, essays—offers cultural insight, enduring emotional depth, and a piercing critique of the customs she both inhabited and dissected.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 22, 2024
I looked up many, if not most, of the places and artworks mentioned in the book and I can confidently say that Wharton does a marvelous job capturing what I saw in photos. To that end one can surmise that she does an equally sound job capturing the atmosphere. The atmosphere from when she experienced it. I'm not sure it would be the same now. Travel writing from different eras is so interesting to me because of that difference. One difference that was utterly depressing was reading about places and sites that were devastated in the World Wars. Reading travelogues from the era before photography is so important to understanding history.
I really enjoyed this book, I see it's not well reviewed. I do think it would be hard to read without pulling up photos for reference, or having visited Italy oneself.
I really enjoyed this book, I see it's not well reviewed. I do think it would be hard to read without pulling up photos for reference, or having visited Italy oneself.
May 18, 2021
I read many of her novels in the late 80s and early 90s. I bought this book at that time, but never got around to reading it. This is a very different book from her novels. I loved it, thought I have never been to the towns see visited or seen the artwork she saw and could not quite imagine what she wrote about. Nor do I understand many of the architectural or ornamental terms she used.
This is a travel book about her journeys in northern Italy. It begins in a Swiss town called Splugen.
Here is a typical sentence: “On all sides one may climb from the altar fringed shores of the rain, through large thickets tremulous with the leap of water, to grassy levels far above, once the valley is seen lengthening southward to a great concourse of peaks." Also, "In the morning these upper meadows are hot and bright, and one is glad of the red eye old Pines and the onyx colored torrents cooling the dusk; but toward sunset, when the shadows make the slopes of turf look like an expense of tumbled velvet, it is pleasant to pace the open ledges, watching the sun recede from the valley, where mowers are still sweeping The grass into long curved lines like ridges of the sea, while the pine-woods on the eastern slopes grow black and the upper snows fade to the color of cold ashes."
She then travels to a city in northern Italy called Chiavenna. From there she travels to see a church in a town called Cerveno. Cerveno is a very small town which should not support a gorgeous church but then there it is. From there they take a boat trip from Lovere to Iseo. The trip is so magical but she wonders whether having landed at Iseo if the lake was still behind her or had vanished. “There is no telling, in such cases, how much the eye receives and how much it contributes; and if ever the boundaries between fact and fancy waiver, it may well be under the spell of the Italian Midsummer madness.“
From Iseo they took a train to Brescia, where there is always a blessed stripe of shade to walk in. On each step of this trip she is visiting churches or monasteries to see the architecture and art.
From there they traveled to Turin. Then it was on to Biella. The scenery was the land. And then it was on to Anforno. This must’ve been an extraordinarily expensive trip and I imagine that would be the case today as well.
They then travel to the shrine of San Giovanni. Then it is on to Varallo.
From there she leaves Varallo and moves on to a small island in the lake of Orta, noted for its isolation.
From here she takes a pause and discusses hermits of old who had fled the cities and their filth to live out their lives in the desert.
“The first hermits shunned each other as they shunned the image of evil; every human relation was a snare, and they sought each other out only in moments of moral or physical extremity, when flesh or spirit quailed before the hallucinations of solitude. “But in the Italian pictures the hermits move in an atmosphere of fraternal tenderness.”
She then decided she would like to visit a place where no previous author of a guidebook had been. She goes to Certaldo and then on to San Vivaldo. Boccaccio came from Certaldo. She was stunned by the artistic significance of the monastery at San Vivaldo and was puzzled as to why it had not been studied and classified.
Next she is in Parma. She spends a little time talking about the boring house front and storefronts and streets of Parma. But then she moves on to a discussion of the artist Correggio.
She then travels to Sicily and talks about the trip from the port up into the mountains. She then jumps to Rome and a trip that she took up to Caprarola. She then spends a great deal of time in Milan. The last chapter is called Italian backgrounds. She then discusses the formula for most renaissance painting. In the foreground are the sacred figures and in the background would be the landscapes that the painters were intimately familiar with. The backgrounds showed what they knew from their own lives. She says that Italy has a foreground and a background as well. The foreground is the Italy of the guide books. To know Italy you must know both.
She muses for quite some time on the notion of some of her day that 17 century Rome was problematic, gauche. But she asks if everything that was created in the 17th century was to be removed what beauty would be left in Rome?
She then talks about Tiepolo. She mentioned that mentions a number of other painters Canaletto, Pietro Bellotti and Longhi. To understand the last one must understand “the fundamental naïveté of that brilliant and corrupt Venetian society“.
“The Venetians were, in fact, amoral rather than immoral.“ “There was no intellectual depravity in Venice because there was hardly any intellect: there was no thought of evil because there was no thought.“
I wonder who Wharton was writing for in this work.
This is a travel book about her journeys in northern Italy. It begins in a Swiss town called Splugen.
Here is a typical sentence: “On all sides one may climb from the altar fringed shores of the rain, through large thickets tremulous with the leap of water, to grassy levels far above, once the valley is seen lengthening southward to a great concourse of peaks." Also, "In the morning these upper meadows are hot and bright, and one is glad of the red eye old Pines and the onyx colored torrents cooling the dusk; but toward sunset, when the shadows make the slopes of turf look like an expense of tumbled velvet, it is pleasant to pace the open ledges, watching the sun recede from the valley, where mowers are still sweeping The grass into long curved lines like ridges of the sea, while the pine-woods on the eastern slopes grow black and the upper snows fade to the color of cold ashes."
She then travels to a city in northern Italy called Chiavenna. From there she travels to see a church in a town called Cerveno. Cerveno is a very small town which should not support a gorgeous church but then there it is. From there they take a boat trip from Lovere to Iseo. The trip is so magical but she wonders whether having landed at Iseo if the lake was still behind her or had vanished. “There is no telling, in such cases, how much the eye receives and how much it contributes; and if ever the boundaries between fact and fancy waiver, it may well be under the spell of the Italian Midsummer madness.“
From Iseo they took a train to Brescia, where there is always a blessed stripe of shade to walk in. On each step of this trip she is visiting churches or monasteries to see the architecture and art.
From there they traveled to Turin. Then it was on to Biella. The scenery was the land. And then it was on to Anforno. This must’ve been an extraordinarily expensive trip and I imagine that would be the case today as well.
They then travel to the shrine of San Giovanni. Then it is on to Varallo.
From there she leaves Varallo and moves on to a small island in the lake of Orta, noted for its isolation.
From here she takes a pause and discusses hermits of old who had fled the cities and their filth to live out their lives in the desert.
“The first hermits shunned each other as they shunned the image of evil; every human relation was a snare, and they sought each other out only in moments of moral or physical extremity, when flesh or spirit quailed before the hallucinations of solitude. “But in the Italian pictures the hermits move in an atmosphere of fraternal tenderness.”
She then decided she would like to visit a place where no previous author of a guidebook had been. She goes to Certaldo and then on to San Vivaldo. Boccaccio came from Certaldo. She was stunned by the artistic significance of the monastery at San Vivaldo and was puzzled as to why it had not been studied and classified.
Next she is in Parma. She spends a little time talking about the boring house front and storefronts and streets of Parma. But then she moves on to a discussion of the artist Correggio.
She then travels to Sicily and talks about the trip from the port up into the mountains. She then jumps to Rome and a trip that she took up to Caprarola. She then spends a great deal of time in Milan. The last chapter is called Italian backgrounds. She then discusses the formula for most renaissance painting. In the foreground are the sacred figures and in the background would be the landscapes that the painters were intimately familiar with. The backgrounds showed what they knew from their own lives. She says that Italy has a foreground and a background as well. The foreground is the Italy of the guide books. To know Italy you must know both.
She muses for quite some time on the notion of some of her day that 17 century Rome was problematic, gauche. But she asks if everything that was created in the 17th century was to be removed what beauty would be left in Rome?
She then talks about Tiepolo. She mentioned that mentions a number of other painters Canaletto, Pietro Bellotti and Longhi. To understand the last one must understand “the fundamental naïveté of that brilliant and corrupt Venetian society“.
“The Venetians were, in fact, amoral rather than immoral.“ “There was no intellectual depravity in Venice because there was hardly any intellect: there was no thought of evil because there was no thought.“
I wonder who Wharton was writing for in this work.
December 12, 2022
This was surprisingly the first non-fiction Wharton book I've gotten around to. It started out fun, with our author touring small towns in Northern Italy and offering sly commentary on the places and people.
As always with books of this nature, I found myself Googling the spots for pictures, amazed to find most of the places still intact, some unchanged, some much larger in population. But maybe it's the time of year (Christmas), or who I am as a reader in 2022, but I fogged out and got pretty bored by the end, when it became a litany of painters. This would ordinarily have been fun for me, but I didn't even bother to look most of it up, and in fact had to keep my phone further than arm's length to keep myself on task.
As always with books of this nature, I found myself Googling the spots for pictures, amazed to find most of the places still intact, some unchanged, some much larger in population. But maybe it's the time of year (Christmas), or who I am as a reader in 2022, but I fogged out and got pretty bored by the end, when it became a litany of painters. This would ordinarily have been fun for me, but I didn't even bother to look most of it up, and in fact had to keep my phone further than arm's length to keep myself on task.
May 5, 2019
very good book, well written, great description of travel and monasteries in Northen Italy at the beginning of the 20th Century
December 14, 2019
Reseña completa aquí -> http://inquilinasnetherfield.blogspot...
July 9, 2024
Some musings on the Italian countryside, art, and beaches. To be honest, I picked this book up in hopes that I would find myself vacationing in Italy someday and when I did, I brought this book and read it in a day. There are 5 other Edith Wharton books I would recommend reading before this one!
March 28, 2009
This book has been on my bookshelf for a number of years, and I was always going to "get around to it," and this challenge presented the perfect opportunity. The title was originally published in 1905, and it details Wharton's visits to Italy.
I had a hard time getting into this book, since I have never visited Italy, and right off the bat she is describing places in minute detail that are not ones familiar to me. A couple of times I even considered stopping, but decided to see if things improved, and they did. Her descriptions of Venice, Milan, and Rome were more interesting and entertaining to me, mainly just because I was more familiar with those towns, from reading and learning about them in school. The final portion of the book is the one I particularly enjoyed, as Wharton discusses how Italian artwork is completely related to, and reflective of, the area of Italy where it was created.
I would recommend this book, especially if you have just visited Italy, or are planning to go soon. I hope someday to pick it up again and see how well it holds up based on actually visiting some of the places she describes.
I had a hard time getting into this book, since I have never visited Italy, and right off the bat she is describing places in minute detail that are not ones familiar to me. A couple of times I even considered stopping, but decided to see if things improved, and they did. Her descriptions of Venice, Milan, and Rome were more interesting and entertaining to me, mainly just because I was more familiar with those towns, from reading and learning about them in school. The final portion of the book is the one I particularly enjoyed, as Wharton discusses how Italian artwork is completely related to, and reflective of, the area of Italy where it was created.
I would recommend this book, especially if you have just visited Italy, or are planning to go soon. I hope someday to pick it up again and see how well it holds up based on actually visiting some of the places she describes.
January 3, 2014
More art history than travel.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews