Gallantry Once a Week: Boswell's Grand Tour
/Before he was a master biographer, James Boswell was a best-selling author of travel writing. Luciano Mangiafico explores his scandalous life in Italy.
Read MoreIf Only Historians Could Write Like Him Now!” The Art and Legacy of Edward Gibbon
/"Always scribble, scribble, scribble!" the King joked to the historian, and we remember it still; Luciano Mangiafico looks at the remarkable life of Edward Gibbon.
Read MorePoor People are Like Oysters: The Life of Giovanni Verga
/Most people today know him only from the libretto of one short opera, but in his own day, he was a famous poet, playwright, and scholar - and a compulsive litigant. Luciano Mangiafico looks at the life of Giovanni Verga.
Read MoreScala or Piolo? The Painstaking Brilliance of Alessandro Manzoni
/Poet, dramatist, and author of the great Italian novel I promessi sposi, Alessandro Manzoni led a life as fascinating as his fiction. Luciano Mangiafico tells the story of the Father of Italian Prose.
Read MoreAriel: Shelley in Italy
/Like so many before him, the celebrated Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley had a tangled and complicated history with Italy, equal parts inspiration and frustration. Luciano Mangiafico tells the story
Read MorePedestaled in Triumph: Robert Browning in Italy
/The great and problematic poet Robert Browning drew some of his most powerful poetic inspirations from the lore and lure of Italy; Luciano Mangiafico traces the complicated relationship of the man to his "adopted homeland."
Read MoreAnd the Moon Be Still As Bright: Lord Byron in Italy (part 2 of 2)
/In self-imposed exile from England, Lord Byron entered a tempestuous love affair with Italy, renting palaces, swimming the canals of Venice, treating his loved ones abominably, and writing great poetry the whole time. The two-part "Byron in Italy" concludes the epic tale.
Read MoreA Palace and a Prison at Each Hand: Lord Byron in Italy (part 1 of 2)
/Byron was mad, bad, and dangerous to know -- and eventually his amorous, adventurous spirit led him to Italy.
Read MoreStudio Matto e Disperatissimo: The Life and Writings of Giacomo Leopardi
/He was the greatest Italian poet since Dante, but he was tormented by a strict upbringing, ruinous health, and moods of black pessmism. He was Giacomo Leopardi, and this is his story.
Read More“He Might As Well Have Called Me Nancy!” Mark Twain in Italy
/After his first visit to Italy, Mark Twain pronounced her "one vast museum of magnificence and misery," and yet he returned again and again. Luciano Magniafaco chronicles his journeys.
Read MoreBack, Back, Down the Old Ways of Time: D. H. Lawrence in Italy
/Year after year, D. H.Lawrence found love, lust, and gainful employment in Italy - and through the strange alchemy of the place, he also found the inspirations for some of his most enduring works of art.
Read MoreThinking God Knows What: James Joyce and Trieste
/Unsettled and penniless, James Joyce's exile was initially more imrpovised than cunning. Luciano Mangiafico tells the story of his early years on the continent.
Read MoreMost Sovereign Master
/"Although virtually all subjects were still religious, their humanity was brought to the fore, emphasizing that God, in the form of Jesus Christ, was made man and that He, and the Virgin Mary, and saints, like us, had human features"
Read MoreNine Ways of Looking at D'Annunzio
/Madman, lothario, despot, drug fiend, friend and enemy of Mussolini - and immortal poet. Gabriele D'Annunzio was all of these things and many more in his whirlwind of a life.
Read MoreAttainted: The Life and Afterlife of Ezra Pound in Italy
/Pound wrote The Pisan Cantos on toilet paper while prisoner in an open-air metal cage during WWII, and he spent many of the following years in mental hospitals. "I can get along with crazy people," he quipped. "It's only the fools I can't stand."
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