A Literary Companion to Venice: Including Seven Walking Tours

As a veteran of the stumbling around with four books in my backpack trying to make sense of the block where I'm standing approach to travel (I don't do guided tours), I became a happier person the day I discovered someone had compiled the highpoints of Venice into one accessible walker's guide. A LITERARY COMPANION TO VENICE by Ian Littlewood is a fine guide. I'm a literary enthusiast and over the years I've managed to find Louisa May Alcott's home in Concord, the stone ranch house Jack London built in Northern California, the supposed location of Robert Louis Stevenson's grass hut in Hawaii, the house in Rye England where Henry James retired, Anne Frank's attic in Amsterdam, the ancient and dour building in Geneva where Calvin framed his sermons, and Hemingway's house in Key West (still inhabited by his cats' cats' cats). Many authors have passed through Venice over the years, and some like Henry James and George Sand left written records of their visits. In LITERARY COMPANION, Littlewood guides the reader on seven tours of Venice, the seventh tour being "North Venice" -- including the island where the fabled San Giorgio Maggiore and the Lagoon were painted in an impressionist sunset captured by Turner. Littlewood provides a map for each of his tours, and at each step along the way he dicusses what you are seeing, who saw it before you, and what they had to say about it. For example, on the tour of the Piazza San Marco, the reader is directed to look "out across the Piazza" and "share the view with a fair number of pigeons.." He says Oscar Wilde's Dorian Grey liked the view.."Stretched on his sofa, he reads some lines of Gautier and thinks back to his stay in Venice" 'The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter around the tall honeycombed Campanile....'" Elizabeth Barrett Browning described the pigeons as "holy."A LITERARY COMPANION is not exhaustive, although it contains refererences to the visits and habitation of many illustrious persons including Dante who stayed in Venice when he had been expelled from Florence. If you want an in-depth story of Venice and it's visitors over the past 1,000 years, I suggest you read John J. Norwich's book VENICE. However, Littlewood's COMPANION will be the book you take to Venice, it's compact, light, and extremely useful.

A Literary Companion to Venice was the best introduction to Venice I could have read in preparation to my first visit there. The author shares stories of famous and unknown writers alike to weave a history of Venice by way of walking tours throughout the city. Great maps and illustrations accompany the seven wonderful walking tours detailed by the author. After reading this book I almost felt as if I'd been to this wonderful city and knew my way around.

The English author adds a literary dimension to seven Venetian walking tours by incorporating quotations from novelists, poets, essayists, reporters, and other observers. The resulting book is livelier than you might expect. Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co