The title says what it is. An English classicist visits Calabria (and a bit of Puglia) in the late 19th century, searching for the past. He notes both the past and the present, but also perhaps inadvertently finds the future?

I'd heard of this book many years ago as a possible source of the word "pap

George Gissing spent a few weeks exploring Calabria -- the "toe" of the Italian peninsula. He visited towns on the coast and up in the mountains, endured bad hotels and downpours, and defied friends in Naples who'd shuddered in horror at his plans to sojourn in the uncivilized south.

His visit came n

Με προβλημάτισε αυτό το βιβλίο. Δεν ξέρω αν μου αρέσει ή όχι, αν συμπαθώ τον συγγραφέα ή όχι, αν πρέπει να δώσω περισσότερη σημασία στις περιγραφές των τοπίων ή στα όσα περί συγγραφικής κλίκας αναφέρει εδώ κι εκεί. Το μόνο που μου μένει είναι πως κανόνισε και εκτέλεσε ένα ταξίδι από Νοέμβριο ως Φλεβ

Thoroughly enjoyable. I’ve read the book as part of my reading challenge for 2019. This is by a local author, I chose the book randomly by way of it being the cheapest on eBay. I had never read Gissing before, though as a Wakefield lass I knew of him.

A more entertaining book I could not have picked.

In the late 1890s, the writer George Gissing set off on a trip to Southern Italy, an intensely personal journey into Magna Graecia with its ancient Greek ruins. “The names of Greece and Italy draw me as no others;” he writes; “they make me young again, and restore the keen impressions of that time w

A Ramble To Calabria With Gissing

By 1897, the English novelist George Gissing (1857 - 1903) had achieved a degree of financial and critical success after years of writing. He took a vacation to Calabria, the "toe" of the southernmost part of the "boot" of Italy. From his youth, Gissing had loved the

This is a mostly pleasant little memoir of a mostly pleasant little tour in 1897. Gissing chose his destinations from readings of Latin and Greek, and seems more interested in comparing the real scenery to what he imagined than in getting to know Calabria in his day. And there are distasteful moment

George Gissing was a very 19th century English traveller; he travelled with dreams in his head of how he wanted southern Italy to be and when the reality turned out rather differently, he got into a muddle and retreated to his trunk (a trunk! he travelled with a trunk) of books. Rather similar in vi