Venetian Life. Volume 1

1883

Storage 9MFW VH

Edinburgh: David Douglas

In the 1850s John Ruskin published his Stones of Venice, a work that extolled the virtues of every architectural crack and crevice in Venice. To Ruskin, Venice epitomized Italian civilization at its height. Author and critic William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was U. S. Consul to Venice from 1861 to 1865. Among other observations, his Venetian Life (1866) reveals something of the Venetians’ culinary customs and their attitude to stoves – ‘The Germans have introduced stoves at Venice, but they are not much in favor with the Italians, who think their heat unwholesome, and endure a degree of cold in their wish to dispense with fire’. This is a reprinted edition of 1883.