Italian Backgrounds (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Edith Wharton

Wharton’s 1901-04 travels yielded nine ruminations about Italy, its culture, and the art of being a perceptive visitor. Includes “An Alpine Posting-Inn,” “A Midsummer Week's Dream,” “The Sanctuaries of the Pennine Alps,” “What the Hermits Saw,” “A Tuscan Shrine,” “Sub Umbra Liliorum,” “March in Italy,” and “Picturesque Milan.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411439320

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.