A Sentimental Journey Through France & Italy
Valenti Angelo New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1929. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus (notable artist/illustrations). Hardcover. Format is approximately 6.5 inches by 9.625 inches. [8], 253, [1] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations. Bookplate of Lillian Bay Dickinson inside front cover. Booksellers label inside the back cover. Cover has wear and soiling. Front hinge has some weakness. Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, and published sermons and memoirs. He attended Hipperholme Grammar School in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge on a sizarship, gaining bachelor's and master's degrees. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. His ecclesiastical satire A Political Romance infuriated the church and was burnt. With his new talent for writing, he published early volumes of his best-known novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Sterne traveled to France to find relief from persistent tuberculosis, documenting his travels in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published weeks before his death. His posthumous Journal to Eliza addresses Eliza Draper, for whom he had romantic feelings. Sterne died in 1768 and was buried in the yard of St George's, Hanover Square. Sterne departed for France in 1762. Sterne was gratified by his reception in France, where Tristram Shandy had made him a celebrity. Aspects of this trip to France were incorporated into Sterne's novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Valenti Angelo (1897-1982) (variant name Valenti Michael Angelo) was an Italian-American printmaker, illustrator and author, born June 23, 1897 in Massarosa, Italy. He immigrated to the United States. Angelo moved to San Francisco, working by day as a laborer and spending his evenings and weekends at libraries and museums. He soon became a versatile artist and an especially skilled engraver and printer. Angelo's favored medium was the linocut, and his prints depicting urban nocturnes and desert scenes of the American Southwest are particularly coveted by collectors and dealers. In 1926, Angelo made his first book illustrations for the well-known, San Francisco-based Grabhorn Press. In a period of 34 years, Angelo decorated and illustrated roughly 250 books. Among these were folio editions of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, and numerous books of the Bible. Many of these books have been included in the annual American Institute of Graphic Arts exhibitions since 1927. Under the tutelage of May Massee of Viking Press, Angelo began writing children's stories in 1937. In 1939, Angelo won the Newbery Honor for Nino. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. Sterne traveled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his travels from a sentimental point of view. The novel can be seen as an epilogue to the possibly unfinished work The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and also as an answer to Tobias Smollett's decidedly unsentimental Travels Through France and Italy. Sterne had met Smollett during his travels in Europe, and strongly objected to his spleen, acerbity and quarrelsomeness. He modeled the character of Smelfungus on him. The novel was extremely popular and influential and helped establish travel writing as the dominant genre of the second half of the 18th century. Unlike prior travel accounts which stressed classical learning and objective non-personal points of view, A Sentimental Journey emphasized the subjective discussions of personal taste and sentiments, of manners and morals over classical learning. Throughout the 1770s female travel writers began publishing significant numbers of sentimental travel accounts. Sentiment also became a favorite style among those expressing non-mainstream views, including political radicalism. The narrator is the Reverend Mr. Yorick, who is slyly represented to guileless readers as Sterne's barely disguised alter ego. The book recounts his various adventures, usually of the amorous type, in a series of self-contained episodes. The book is less eccentric and more elegant in style than Tristram Shandy and was better received by contemporary critics. It was published on 27 February, and on 18 March Sterne died. Condition: Fair.
Keywords: Valenti Angelo, Smelfungus, Tobias Smollett, Travel Literature, Novel, Amorous, Adventures, Manners, Morals, Sentimental Genre, Subjective Perspective, Lillian Bay Dickinson
[Book #85527]
Price: $100.00