Italian Backgrounds (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Wharton’s 1901-04 travels yielded nine ruminations about Italy, its culture, and the art of being a perceptive visitor. Includes "An Alpine Posting-Inn,” "A Midsummer Week's Dream,” "The Sanctuaries of the Pennine Alps,” "What the Hermits Saw,” "A Tuscan Shrine,” "Sub Umbra Liliorum,” "March in Italy,” and "Picturesque Milan.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an acclaimed chronicler and keen observer of privileged society, novelist, and short story writer. Her novel The Age of Innocence made her the first female Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 1921. She is the also the author of The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome.