Pictures from Italy

Charles Dickens

Mar 2006 · Penguin UK

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'When Dickens has described something you see it for the rest of your life' George Orwell

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. Combining compelling travelogue with piercing social commentary, he portrays a nation of great contrasts: between grandiose buildings and squalid poverty, ancient monuments and everyday life, past and present.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Kate Flint

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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.