''Italian Hours'' is a book of

travel writing Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel c ...

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

published in 1909. The book collected essays that James had written over nearly forty years about a country he knew and loved well. James extensively revised and sometimes expanded the essays to create a more consistent whole. He also added two new essays and an introduction.

Summary and themes

''Italian Hours'' ends with the phrase, "the luxury of loving Italy," and everything in the book indicates that James enjoyed this luxury to the fullest. But he was by no means a blind lover. His opening essay on

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, for instance, doesn't gloss over the sad conditions of life for the city's people: "Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few." Still, James goes on to sketch enough of the beauty of Venice to make it seem a fair compensation. Throughout the book he constantly comes back to the beauty and amenity of Italian life, despite the all too frequent material shortcomings. Venice and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

get the most extended treatment, but James doesn't neglect the rest of the country. His Roman essays, though, show the strongest touch of his own experiences, especially his long rides on horseback through the Campagna and his many walks through various neighborhoods in the city.

Critical evaluation

Few critics have put up much of a struggle against the charm of ''Italian Hours'', the most loving of all James' travel writings. The book is justly valued for its deep appreciation of Italian people, places and art. Although there are inevitable stylistic variations from the earlier essays to the latest, the unevenness hardly spoils the reader's enjoyment and may even add some welcome variety. Writing in The New York Times, critic

Adam Begley Adam C. Begley (born 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American freelance writer, and was the books editor for ''The New York Observer'' from 1996 to 2009. Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harv ...

writes that "the spectacle of Henry James morphing into a lazy, contented, 'uninvestigating' tourist... gives talian Hoursa very satisfactory narrative arc." In ''

The Golden Bowl ''The Golden Bowl'' is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James's career. ''The Golden Bowl'' explores the tangle of int ...

'' Maggie relates a pretty image of Amerigo's: "He called it a 'serenade,' a low music that, outside one of the windows of the sleeping house, disturbed his rest at night... when finally, rising on tiptoe, he had looked out, he had recognised in the figure below with a mandolin, all duskily draped in her grace, the raised appealing eyes and the one irresistible voice of the ever-to-be-loved Italy." James could never resist the voice, either.

References

Bibliography

* * ''Henry James Collected Travel Writings - The Continent - A Little Tour in France, Italian Hours, Other Travels'' edited by Richard Howard (New York:

Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rang ...

1993)

External links

web site * {{Henry James 1909 non-fiction books American travel books Books by Henry James Books about Italy British travel books English non-fiction books

Summary and themes

Table of contents

Critical evaluation

References

Bibliography

External links