The Extra-Illustrated Novel as an Italian Souvenir

George Eliot’s Romola (1863), set in fifteenth-century Florence, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Marble Faun (1860), set in nineteenth-century Rome, have long appealed to travelers. The Longfellow family was no exception. With their detailed descriptions of Renaissance Florence and Risorgimento Rome, these novels served as guidebooks, their narratives providing both real and virtual travelers with an informative and easy-to-follow itinerary.

They also served as souvenirs. Travelers chose photographs to illustrate their copies, either individually or in pre-assembled sets, then had them fitted with decorative endpapers and specially bound in local stationary shops. Like so many others, Samuel and Alice Longfellow engaged in this practice, and their experience demonstrates how these extra-illustrated novels allowed travelers to carry Italy home with them.

Jacqueline Marie Musacchio is a Professor of Art at Wellesley College, specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art. She is the author of the recent article “Carrying Home Renaissance Florence in Extra-Illustrated Copies of George Eliot’s Romola.”