American authors reinventing Italy. The writings of exceptional nineteenth-century women

American Authors Reinventing Italy: The Writings of Exceptional Nineteenth-Century Women is a collection of scholarly papers that examine Italy in the writings of such American women as Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Edith Wharton. The introduction provides a general picture of the British and American female authors in Italy, in particular Florence, and discusses the works of such writers as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ouida, Violet Paget, Kate Field, and Francesca Alexander. In the essay that forms Chapter One, Debra Bernardi (Carroll College, Montana) examines sexuality in Margaret Fuller's Italian writings; in Chapter Two, Philip J. Kowalski (Wake Forest University, North-Carolina) analyzes Harriet Beecher Stowe's Italian views in her travel texts and her novel set in Italy; Sirpa Salenius (University of New Haven in Florence, Italy), in Chapter Three, looks at the way Constance Fenimore Woolson uses Italian tropes in her discussion of contemporary issues; and in Chapter Four, Virginia Ricard (University of Bordeaux, France) discusses themes, settings, and characters in Edith Wharton's fiction and non-fiction writing that deals with Italy.
_______________________________________ Editor Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson. She is the author of Set in Stone: 19th-century American Authors in Florence (2003) and Florence, Italy: Images of the City in Nineteenth-Century American Writing (2007). She has been teaching English and American literature at American University programs in Rome and Florence. Her Ph.D. in English studies is from the University of Joensuu (Finland).