In 1775, the young Count de Sade decided to turn a flight from legal trouble into an opportunity to undertake the "grand tour." He transformed his sojourns in Florence, Rome, Naples, and their environs into a philosophical travelogue; alongside advice on where to go and what to see, his Journey to Italy would include analyses of local customs and institutions, history and politics, natural phenomena, and the development of the arts. For today’s readers, Journey to Italy provides remarkable portraits of major Italian cities and the surrounding countryside, vivid accounts of aristocratic and popular entertainments, and a clear sense of what it was like to be a tourist in eighteenth-century Italy – from scams, rough roads, and unreliable guidebooks to learned interlocutors, balls, and nights at the opera. We witness Sade learning about the lives of Roman emperors, the machinations and misdeeds of pontiffs, the power struggles of the Medici, the ancient libertine world revealed by the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and a host of artistic examples and cultural practices – the material he would soon metamorphose into trenchant satire, gothic horror, and violent sexual fantasy. This book presents the first English translation of Sade’s unfinished and unpolished Journey to Italy along with his extensive dossiers of notations, sketches, plans, and correspondence. The translation is accompanied by extensive explanatory annotations and preceded by a critical introduction that provides biographical, artistic, historical, and intellectual context for Sade’s fascinating project, connecting his travels in and writings about Italy to his later famous and controversial works.

In An Italian Journey, Jean Giono describes his journey to the land of his father's people. A reluctant traveler (he rarely left Provence), Giono discovers a strange beauty not only in the palazzi and canals of Venice but also in wistful waiters, suspicious hairdressers, pugnacious men of God, recalcitrant coffeemakers, umbrellas, and field machinery. In Giono's world a stamp collectors' market can appear to verge on revolution and inept municipal musicians suddenly offer Mozartian joys.

Federico Fellini is often considered a disengaged filmmaker, interested in self-referential dreams and grotesquerie rather than contemporary politics. This book challenges that myth by examining the filmmaker’s reception in Italy, and by exploring his films in the context of significant political debates. By conceiving Fellini’s cinema as an individual expression of the nation’s “mythical biography,” the director’s most celebrated themes and images — a nostalgia for childhood, unattainable female figures, fantasy, the circus, carnival — become symbols of Italy’s traumatic modernity and perpetual adolescence.

"Wonderful book...a beautiful love story of a husband and a wife. I laughed, I cried, I stayed up half the night reading this amazing book." Marian S

This delightful jewel-like book evokes unmistakably Italian landscapes and cityscapes. Anne Desmet's pen commits every detail to paper, and the small-scale format emphasises her distinctive flair for capturing the relationship between extreme foreground and distance. This is a unique opportunity to explore Italy, from the Apennines to the Veneto, through the eyes of a meticulous and precise artist. AUTHOR: Anne Desmet RA specialises in wood engravings, linocuts and mixed-media collages. She has received over thirty international awards, and her work is included in museum collections and publications worldwide. She was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in May 2011. For fifteen years she was editor of Printmaking Today magazine, and has published three printmaking books. She lives and works in London. SELLING POINTS: * Desmet's beautifully packaged book is packed, cover to cover, with a seductive grand tour of Italian cityscapes and landscapes * Colourful and atmospheric sketches in pen, wash and watercolour grant a unique insight into the perspectives and preoccupations of the artist roaming abroad * Transports the viewer from Rome and Venice to the landscapes of Sicily and Umbria 60 colour

Following the success of Francesco's Venice, Francesco da Mosto ventures further afield, this time taking in all of Italy. As he visits the spectacular lakes and fashionable cities of the north and passes through the hills of Tuscany before heading south towards Rome, Naples, and Palermo, he celebrates the country's art and culture--its cathedrals, churches, palaces, opera houses, paintings, sculpture, music, and cuisine. Introducing us to many of the figures who populate the country's rich and vibrant history, his journey also takes in Italian society as it is today. Splendidly illustrated with John Parker's breathtaking color photos and enlivened with marvelous anecdotes about his family and the fascinating characters he meets along the way, Francesco's Italy is the story of both the country we all know and love and the secret Italy only an insider can reveal.