Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
With the advent of rail travel in the 1840s, the prospect of a cultural odyssey opened to
the middle classes. Wealthy travellers from Britain, America and Australasia flocked to
Italy, some of whom wrote about their experiences. Notable among them were Henry
James, who set parts of
The Portrait of a Lady
(1881) and
Roderick Hudson
(1875) here;
George Eliot, whose
Romola
(1862) was set in 15th-century Florence; and EM Forster,
who set
A Room with a View
(1908) in Florence and
Where Angels Fear to Tread
(1905)
in San Gimignano (fictionalised as Monteriano).
Things slowed down in the early 20th century, with only a few major novelists choos-
ing to set their work here. These included Somerset Maugham (
Up at the Villa;
1941) and
Aldous Huxley (
Time Must Have a Stop;
1944).
In recent decades, a number of highly regarded novels have been set in Tuscany. Per-
haps the best known of these are by English writer Linda Proud, whose Botticelli trilogy -
A Tabernacle for the Sun, Pallas and the Centaur
and
The Rebirth of Venus
- is set in
Renaissance Florence during the Pazzi Conspiracy, the Medici exile and the rise of Savon-
arola. The historical detail in all three is exemplary, and each is a cracking good read. Her
novel about Botticelli's master Fra' Filippo Lippi,
A Gift for the Magus,
was published in
2012.
Other writers who have used Renaissance Florence as a setting include Sarah Dunant
(
The Birth of Venus;
2003), Salman Rushdie (
The Enchantress of Florence;
2008),
Michaela-Marie Roessner-Hermann (
The Stars Dispose;
1997, and
The Stars Dispel;
1999) and Jack Dann (
The Memory Cathedral;
1995). Of these, Dann wins the prize for
constructing the most bizarre plot, setting his novel in a version of the Renaissance in
which Leonardo da Vinci actually constructs a number of his inventions (eg the flying ma-
chine) and uses them during a battle in the Middle East while in the service of a Syrian
general.
Also set in Florence are
Innocence
(1986) by Booker Prize-winning novelist Penelope
Fitzgerald, which is set during the 1950s;
The Sixteen Pleasures
(1994) by Robert Hel-
lenga, set after the devastating flood of 1966;
The English Patient
(1992) by Michael
Ondaatje; and
Inferno
(2013) by Dan Brown of
The De Vinci Code
fame (or should that
be infamy?).
