Episode 19: Literary Florence

Florence - Photo by Nicola Pavan on Unsplash

Last Updated on February 15, 2023 by Hannah Henderson

The final episode on Florence focuses on a selection of the many literary writings connected to the city, beginning with the Tuscan writers Petrarch and Boccacio whose works became the foundation of modern Italian literature and continuing with the English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning who made their home in the city. Then four novels set in Florence are covered: Irving Stone’s biographical novel about Michelangelo,’The Agony and the Ecstasy’, ‘Galileo’s Daughter’ by Dava Sobel (2000), E M Forster’s ‘A Room with a View’ (1908) and finally Sarah Dunant’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ (2003), a vivid imagining of the life of a 15 year-old cloth merchant’s daughter, which paints a colourful picture of Florence in 1528.

MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON

More information about Florence coming soon.

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Links & Reading

3 useful websites for tourists
Feel Florence
Visit Florence 
Destination Florence

4 guidebooks on Florence
Pocket Rough Guide to Florence 
Time Out Florence City Guide
Blue Guide Florence by Alta Macadam
Strolling through Florence by Mario Erasmo

2 more guidebooks on Florence and Tuscany
Lonely Planet Guide to Florence and Tuscany 
Eyewitness Travel Guide to Florence and Tuscany by Christopher Catling

3 history books and a guide to art and architecture
Florence, the Biography of a City by Christopher Hibbert
The Medici by Paul Strathern
The Medici by Mary Hollingsworth
Art and Architecture in Florence by Rolf C Wirtz

3 anthologies
Florence: A Traveller’s Reader by Edward Cheney
Florence Stories Everyman’s Library Pocket Classics
A Literary Companion to Florence by Frances King

2 memoirs of Florence
Florence: A Delicate Case by David Leavitt
A Florence Diary by Diana Athill

4 novels set in Florence
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone (Biographical novel about Michelangelo)
A Room with a View by E M Forster
Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel