the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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J.C. de Sismondi : history of the Italian republics;: Being a view of the origin, progress, and fall of Italian freedom, A

'she asked [Byron] to recommend her some books of modern history. At present she was reading Sismondi's "Italian Republics". And she had read "Lara". Shakespeare alone possessed the same power as Byron had there displayed'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke      Print: Book

J.C. de Sismondi : history of the Italian republics;: Being a view of the origin, progress, and fall of Italian freedom, A

[Letter from Byron to Annabella Milbanke, Aug 25th 1814]. 'You can hardly have a better modern work than Sismondi's, but he has since published another on the Literature of Italy, Spain &c., which I would willingly recommend... on my return to London I would gladly forward it... Gibbon is well worth a hundred perusals. Watson's Philip of Spain, and Coxe's Spain and Austria are dry enough; but there is some advantage to be extracted even from them. Vertot's Revolutions (but writes not history but romance). The best thing of that kind I met by accident at Athens in a Convent Library in old and not "very choice Italian". I forget the title - but it was a history in some thirty tomes of all Conjurazioni whatsoever from Catiline's down to Count Fiesco of Lavagna's in Genoa and Braganza's in Lisbon. I read it through (having nothing else to read) & having nothing to compare it withal, thought it perfection'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron      Print: Book

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