Italian Hours.

JAMES, Henry.

Item Number: 78054

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909.

First American edition of this book of travel writing, wonderfully illustrated by Joseph Pennell. Quarto, original cloth, gilt pictorial stamped to the front panel and spine, top edge gilt. Illustrated by Joseph Pennell with 32 color plates, with tissue guards. In near fine condition with light rubbing to the extremities.

In these essays on travels in Italy written from 1872 to 1909, Henry James explores art and religion, political shifts and cultural revolutions, and the nature of travel itself. James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aesthetic allure of Venice, the vitality of Rome, and the noisy, sensuous appeal of Naples is everywhere marked by pervasive regret for the disappearance of the past and by ambivalence concerning the transformation of nineteenth-century Europe.