The second half of the nineteenth century was a momentous time in Italian history, marked by the unification of the peninsula and the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. Three American women writers had a front-seat view of this history while they lived in Italy: Caroline Crane Marsh, the wife of the United States Minister; journalist Anne Hampton Brewster; and Emily Bliss Gould, founder of a vocational school for Italian children.
Joining me to help us learn more about these American women in Italy in the late 19th Century is Dr. Etta Madden, the Clif & Gail Smart Professor of English at Missouri State University and author of several books, including Engaging Italy: American Women's Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Photo credits: Engraving of Emily Bliss Gould, by A.H. Ritchie, based on a portrait by Lorenzo Suszipj, in A Life Worth Living, by Leonard Woolsey Bacon, 1879, Public Domain; Anne Hampton Brewster, Albumen photograph, ca. 1874, McAllister Collection, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Caroline Crane Marsh, ca 1866, Fratelli Alinari, Florence, Special Collections Library, University of Vermont. 

Additional Sources:

“How Italy became a country, in one animated map,” by Zack Beauchamp, Vox, December 1, 2014.

“Issues Relevant to U.S. Foreign Diplomacy: Unification of Italian States,” Office of the Historian, US Department of State.

“The Italian Risorgimento: A timeline,” The Florentine, March 10, 2011.

“About George Perkins Marsh,” The Marsh Collection, Smithsonian.

“Ambasciatrice, Activist, Auntie, Author: Caroline Crane Marsh,” by Etta Madden, New York Public Library, December 19, 2018.

“Traveling with Caroline Crane Marsh,” University of Vermont Special Collections, June 11, 2020.

“Anne Hampton Brewster,” Archival Gossip Collection.

“Anne Hampton Brewster: Nineteenth-Century News from Rome,” by Etta Madden, November 21, 2018.

“Anne Hampton Brewster papers finding aid,” Library Company of Philadelphia.

“Emily Bliss Gould: An American in Italy–A Guest Post,” by Etta Madden, History in the Margins, September 30, 2022.


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