Women's Travel Writings in Italy, Part II

Betty Hagglund

Part II Volume 5 Maria Graham, Three Months Passed in the Mountains East of Rome (1820) In 1819, the Englishwoman Maria Graham spent three months in the mountains east of Rome. Already an established travel writer, Graham was keen to see parts of Italy that did not form part of the established tourist trail and to observe the local villagers whom she described as having 'manners and habits [which] savour of an older world'. Much of the book is devoted to descriptions and drawings of a troupe of local bandits whom Graham regarded as romantic heroes but who eventually drove the party back to Rome. Volumes 6-7 Lady Morgan, Italy (1821) Sydney Owenson's, alias Lady Morgan, travelogue is a landmark of empathy for a post- Napoleonic Italy in the throes of repression. It is full of anecdotes as well as of sweeping political statements about Italian history and society, England's role in Restoration Europe, and her own situation as a woman traveller with Jacobin sympathies. The Quarterly Review described it as 'a series of offences against good morals, good politics, good sense, and good taste' and it was censured by the King of Sardinia, the Emperor of Austria, and the Pope. Nevertheless it made her famous, earning Byron's praise for its radicalism, and was used by generations of Anglophone visitors as a stimulating guidebook. Volumes 8-9 Harriet Morton, Protestant Vigils, or Evening Records of a Journey in Italy (1829) Morton gives a glimpse into the world of a middle-class English Protestant traveller in southern Europe, struggling to reconcile the architectural and artistic beauties of the scenes before her with her deeply-held anti-Catholic prejudices.