Florence, a delicate case
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-176).

The promise of a destiny, verging on the erotic on one side and the artistic on the other, seems always to have attached itself to Florence in the imagination of the foreigner... So Leavitt writes of the city where he made his home in the 1990s--as part of Florence's Anglo-American community. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the rise of Mussolini, visitors and expatriates ranging from Ronaldo Firbank to Henry James to Mary McCarthy flocked to Florence. They came to pursue literary aspirations--some misguided--or to indulge in sexual liasions that would have been forbidden at home. They came--as many do today--for art, long meals, and for gossip. Leavitt moves fleetly between past and present to illuminate the Italian city, its rich history, and the reasons so many are eager to claim some aspect of it as their own.