American Novelists in Italy: The Discoverers, Allston to James

This is a study of the effect of their travels in Italy on thirteen American writers, among them Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W. D. Howells, and Henry James. Nathalia Wright's thesis is that Italy was a major influence on the American writers of fiction who visited that country. Some of these writers went to Italy for reasons of health. others because they were dissatisfied with the status of artists in the United States and wished the pleasure and adventur...