Pictures from Italy

Charles Dickens, Kate Flint, Kate Flint

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English

Penguin Classics
29 January 1998

A thrilling travelogue of the year Dickens spent in Italy in the mid 1840s, published at a time when interest in his more marginal work is constantly increasing.

In 1844, Charles Dickens took a break from novel writing to travel through Italy for almost a year and Pictures from Italy is an 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 thrilling travelogue with piercing social commentary, Pictures from Italy is a revealing depiction of an exciting and disquieting journey.

By: Charles Dickens
Notes by: Kate Flint
Introduction by: Kate Flint
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 128mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 205g
ISBN: 9780140434316
ISBN 10: 0140434313
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 29 January 1998
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

CHARLES DICKENS was born in 1812, the second of eight children. He received little formal education, but after a slow start, became a publishing phenomenon, and an instant success. Public grief at his death in 1870 was considerable: he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. Kate Flint is Professor of English at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She is author of The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (1993) and The Victorians and the Visual Imagination (2000), and has published widely on nineteenth and twentieth century literary and cultural history. She is currently completing The Transatlantic Indian 1776-1930.

Reviews for Pictures from Italy

After finishing Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens holidayed in Italy for a year. But, of course, he wrote about his travels and here is 'a chaotic magic-lantern show' of 19th-century Genoa, Parma, Verona, Rome, Pisa, Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum... The only drawback about this wonderful book is the 25 pages of largely superfluous notes. Ignore them, and enjoy what must certainly have been the best travel book of 1846. (Kirkus UK)