ITALIAN JOURNEYS by WILLIAM D. HOWELLS (1837-1920)

Publisher: Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig, Germany, 1883. Authorized edition.

Description: Contemporary leather binding with deep embossed design, four brass corner medallions on covers and a raised center with gilt lettering. Four raised bands and gilt lettering on the spine. Red stained edges. Decorated floral design endpapers.

Condition:  Good. Covers show wear from handling with scuffs, chips and bumps. Cover spine hinge is cracked. Spine is rubbed and is missing a piece on the lower right. (see photos) Pages are browned, but clean and tight.

Pages: 358

Size: 5" x 6.5"

Weight: 14 ozs

Very unique binding.

William Dean Howells was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as for his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria. Wikipedia

Caught in bureaucratic limbo as he waited to hear whether his tenure as a consul in Venice was concluded, (some things don't change) William Dean Howells decided to spend three months exploring some little-known regions of Italy. His journalistic eye for detail and keen insight come through in this engaging volume of travel essays based on the trip.

Tauchnitz's English language editions of travel books by American authors were a popular item with American tourists in Europe, and were frequently put into eye-catching bindings.

This book is from the estate of Caroline (Caro) Weir Ely (1884 ? 1974). She was an accomplished bookbinder, printmaker, etcher, and painter. She was educated in both New York and Paris and continued to work, maintaining a studio, even after she married and became a mother a rare occurrence in the early 1900s. She settled in Old Lyme, Connecticut, a town known for its art colony. Like her father Julian Alden Weir a noted American Impressionist painter, she often painted near her home. Following her father's death, she sometimes printed his etched plates, producing posthumous editions of his landscape prints. Wikipedia