Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers and Artists in Italy - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, July, 2003

Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers and Artists in Italy. Alison Chapman and Jane Stabler, editors. Manchester University Press. [pound sterling]15.99 p.b. 246 pages. ISBN 0-7190-6130-X. The effect of Italy on male writers and artists from Britain is well established but there is less information about the country's effects on women.

This collection of eleven essays seeks to fill that gap by looking at those nineteenth century Anglo-American women artists, poets, novelists, travel writers and political commentators who visited or lived in Italy. There are essays on the reaction of early nineteenth century travellers to the Italian Catholic Church, the influence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her relation with the Risorgimento, the work of Anthony Trollope's sister-in-law, Theodosia Garrow Trollope and Frances Power Cobbe, the representation of Italian unification in women's works, George Eliot's novel, Romola, the reaction to Italy in the paintings of Marie Spartali Stillman, the relation with Margaret Oliphant to Venice and the writings of John Ruskin, the work of 'Vernon Lee' and, finally, an essay on the relationship of women writers and the idea of the Renaissance as seen in Italian civilisation and history. It is somewhat surprising that there is nothing on Anthony Trollope's mother, Frances, who lived for many years in Florence.