Venice
Venice is the most written-about city in English travel writing, and the books tend to divide into two kinds: those that describe the buildings and those that use the water as a way of talking about desire. Ruskin spent years measuring the stones; James sent Isabel Archer and Milly Theale there to be disappointed; Radcliffe put a Gothic heroine in a Venetian palace.
The Marciana library was built in the sixteenth century and holds one of the finest collections of Greek and Latin manuscripts in the world. Venice was also one of the great printing cities of Europe, and its book trade is the reason so many sixteenth-century texts survive at all.
A library to check
- Italian national library catalogue (OPAC SBN) — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Venice
- The Wings of the Dove — Henry James, 1902. James at his most morally intricate, with Venice doing half the work.
- The Stones of Venice — John Ruskin, 1851. A Victorian argument about buildings that is really an argument about labour.
- The Italian — Ann Radcliffe, 1797. Radcliffe's best-plotted novel, and the one with the most interesting villain.
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage — Lord Byron, 1812. The poem that made Byron famous, and the best travel poem of the century.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.