Social Aspects of the Italian Revolution, in a Series of Letters from Florence
With a Sketch of Subsequent Events up to the Present Time

Published during the time of Italy's unification, this 1861 work offers a first-hand account of the Risorgimento as it unfolded.

Theodosia Garrow Trollope (Author)

9781108066181, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 January 2014

328 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.42 kg

Having married and settled in Florence in the 1840s, the poet and translator Theodosia Trollope (1816–65) found herself well placed to chronicle the events which contributed to the unification of Italy. While another Englishwoman in Italy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, would become better known for her verse, Trollope nevertheless firmly established herself in the liberal and literary circles of Florentine society, allowing her to witness at first hand, and explore in prose, the effects that the Risorgimento was having on those living through it. Vividly capturing the unfolding situation in Tuscany, twenty-seven letters first appeared in The Athenaeum in 1859–60. They were published together in this work of 1861, along with an update on the months that had elapsed since the last letter was written in April 1860. Championing the cause of unification, Trollope's writing helped to generate enthusiasm in Britain for the progress and personalities of the Risorgimento.

Preface
1. The fall of a dynasty
2. Ominous predictions
3. A feast-day in mourning
4. A military-religious pageant
5. Echoes of Solferino
6. Peace no blessing
7. White there's life there's hope
8. A hint for Congress
9. Another step forward
10. A Tuscan parliament
11. Two pictures
12. Another rung of the ladder
13. Uncanny prospects for the cause
14. The feast of St Francis
15. An arrival from Venice
16. Tuscany in swaddling-clothes
17. Mars and Terpsichore
18. Italian evangelical church
19. Christmas bell-chimes and dainties
20. The thanksgiving service
21. What the Codini said
22. Three bright days
23. A theatre new baptized
24. Universal suffrage
25. A new dynasty
26. The art exhibition
27. The bridegroom's coming
A sketch of subsequent events.

Subject Areas: European history [HBJD]