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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9789353449131 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Lector House |
| Publication date: | 07/08/2019 |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.34(d) |
About the Author
Born into a prosperous New York family, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote more than 15 novels, including The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and other esteemed books. She was distinguished for her work in the First World War and was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Letters from Yale University. She died in France at the age of 75.
Date of Birth:
January 24, 1862Date of Death:
August 11, 1937Place of Birth:
New York, New YorkPlace of Death:
Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, FranceEducation:
Educated privately in New York and EuropeRead an Excerpt
FLORENTINE VILLAS OR centuries Florence has been celebrated for her villa-clad hills. According to an old chronicler, the country houses were more splendid than those in the town, and stood so close-set among their olive-orchards and vineyards that the traveller "thought himself in Florence three leagues before reaching the city." Many of these houses still survive, strongly planted on their broad terraces, from the fifteenth-century farmhouse-villa, with its projecting eaves and square tower, to the many-windowed maison de plaisance in which the luxurious nobles of the seventeenth century spent the gambling and chocolate-drinking weeks of the vintage season. It is characteristic of Florentine thrift and conservatism that the greater number of these later and more pretentious villas are merely additions to the plain old buildings, while, even in the rare cases where the whole structure is new, the baroque exuberance which became fashionable in the seventeenth century is tempered by a restraint and severity peculiarly Tuscan. So numerous and well preserved are the buildingsof this order about Florence that the student who should attempt to give an account of them would have before him a long and laborious undertaking; but where the villa is to be considered in relation to its garden, the task is reduced to narrow limits. There is perhaps no region of Italy so rich in old villas and so lacking in old VILLA GAMBERA1A, AT SETTIGNANO, NEAR FLORENCE gardens as the neighbourhood of Florence. Various causes have brought about this result. The environs of Florence have always been frequented by the wealthy classes, not only Italian but foreign. The Tuscan nobility have usually been richenough to alter their gardens in accordance with the varying horticulturalfashions i...