Download Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing
As one of guide compilations to propose, this Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing has some strong factors for you to check out. This book is extremely suitable with exactly what you require now. Besides, you will likewise like this publication Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing to review because this is among your referred publications to check out. When getting something new based upon encounter, amusement, and also various other lesson, you could utilize this book Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing as the bridge. Starting to have reading routine can be gone through from various ways and from variant sorts of publications
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing
Download Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing
Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing. Pleased reading! This is exactly what we intend to say to you that like reading a lot. Just what concerning you that assert that reading are only responsibility? Never ever mind, reviewing habit must be begun with some particular reasons. Among them is reading by commitment. As exactly what we want to supply here, the book qualified Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing is not kind of required publication. You can enjoy this book Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing to read.
Well, book Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing will certainly make you closer to just what you want. This Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing will certainly be consistently excellent friend whenever. You might not forcedly to consistently finish over reading a book in brief time. It will be only when you have leisure and spending couple of time to make you feel pleasure with just what you check out. So, you could obtain the definition of the message from each sentence in the e-book.
Do you know why you ought to read this website as well as exactly what the relation to reading book Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing In this contemporary age, there are many means to acquire guide as well as they will certainly be a lot easier to do. One of them is by getting guide Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing by on the internet as exactly what we inform in the link download. Guide Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing could be a selection due to the fact that it is so correct to your need now. To get the book on-line is quite easy by simply downloading them. With this possibility, you can review guide any place as well as whenever you are. When taking a train, awaiting list, and waiting for a person or other, you could read this online book Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing as a good friend once more.
Yeah, reviewing a book Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing can add your close friends checklists. This is just one of the solutions for you to be effective. As understood, success does not imply that you have wonderful things. Understanding and knowing greater than various other will certainly provide each success. Close to, the message as well as perception of this Queen Bee Of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, By Ben Downing could be taken and picked to act.
"Quite simply one of the best books of the year." ―Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
Ben Downing's Queen Bee of Tuscany brings an extraordinary Victorian back to life. Born into a distinguished intellectual family and raised among luminaries such as Dickens and Thackeray, Janet Ross married at eighteen and went to live in Egypt. There, for the next six years, she wrote for the London Times, hobnobbed with the developer of the Suez Canal, and humiliated pashas in horse races. In 1867 she moved to Florence, Italy where she spent the remaining sixty years of her life writing a series of books and hosting a colorful miscellany of friends and neighbors, from Mark Twain to Bernard Berenson, at Poggio Gherardo, her house in the hills above the city. Eventually she became the acknowledged doyenne of the Anglo-Florentine colony, as it was known. Yet she was also immersed in the rural life of Tuscany: An avid agriculturalist, she closely supervised the farms on her estate and the sharecroppers who worked them, often pitching in on grape and olive harvests.
Spirited, erudite, and supremely well-connected, Ross was one of the most dynamic women of her day. Her life offers a fascinating window on fascinating times, from the Risorgimento to the rise of fascism.
Encompassing all this rich history, Queen Bee of Tuscany is a panoramic portrait of an age, a family, and our evolving love affair with Tuscany.
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013
- Sales Rank: #808539 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Published on: 2013-06-18
- Released on: 2013-06-18
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x 1.19" w x 6.41" l, 1.26 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Booklist
Janet Ross was the type of woman we’re trained not to expect in history: someone who, in an earlier era, conducted her life with a freedom and breadth of experience we associate with women in the late twentieth century. Born in 1842 into an eccentric and well-traveled family, she married young, lived in Egypt and Italy, and eventually settled in Florence. Along the way, she rubbed shoulders with many of the luminaries of her day, wrote, painted, raced horses, managed estates, and made her home the hub of the Anglo-Florence community. The small anecdotes that make up most of this history—attendance at a ball, renovating a new house, a visit from Mark Twain, the comings and goings of minor figures and their feuds—should be of interest to cultural historians of the time period. It will be of less interest for general readers looking for a rousing yarn. --Lynn Weber
Review
“Queen Bee of Tuscany is so amusing, in so many ways, it's hard to know where to begin the praise . . . This is a perfect book for the bedside, poolside or, if you're really lucky, that long long plane ride to Italy . . . Let me stress that none of what I've said quite conveys the pleasure of reading Queen Bee of Tuscany. This isn't merely a history of Janet Ross and her family or of the long-standing Anglo-Florentine colony. It's a compendium of literary and historical vignettes, a showcase for it author's excellent prose, and quite simply one of the best books of the year.” ―Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Downing has assembled an immense amount of information, not only about this remarkable family of literate, artistic, and well-connected women writers . . . but about the vast cast of foreigners who, from the end of the Napoleonic wars, made Tuscany their home . . . Queen Bee of Tuscany provides a rich historical survey of a lost and charmed age.” ―Caroline Moorehead, The Wall Street Journal
“Now and then, there appear certain lives that serve as lenses onto an entire generation--those lucky few who happen to live at a place and time of particular foment and historical import, and whose personal destinies intersect with the great movements of art, literature, and politics that define an age . . . Janet Ross--whose story is detailed in rollicking fashion in Ben Downing's new book, The Queen Bee of Tuscany--is just one such character . . . She'd been born amid the optimistic expansion and bustle of Victorian empire; she passed away in the brief pause between Europe's most deadly and debilitating wars. In between, she led, in Downing's words, ‘one of the fullest lives imaginable,' and her ‘forceful personality made, for better or worse, a strong impression on all those who met her.' We may not remember the name Janet Ross these days, but Downing's book stands a fair chance of changing that--and if he succeeds, the history of women . . . will be all the richer.” ―Katie Baker, The Daily Beast
“Through his loving portrait of Janet Ross and her complex connections to the native and expatriate communities of Tuscany, Downing has created an engrossing and wonderfully readable narrative of this captivating woman, her coterie, and the era in which she lived.” ―Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
“I knew nothing of Janet Ross before I opened this exhilarating book and began to relish her crowded, convivial life and appetite for thrills. Ben Downing is a skilful and enthusiastic writer who knows how to tell a good story. He works like an accomplished artist, painting a vivid cultural and historical background and then placing his subject in a memorable Florentine landscape. Reading this blend of biography and social history is like taking a first-class time-traveling journey into mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth- century Europe. I greatly enjoyed keeping company with such a forceful and surprising character--and so will many readers.” ―Michael Holroyd, author of A Book of Secrets
“Ben Downing's life of the extraordinary Janet Ross reads like deep, delicious gossip from a bygone era. Combining a wonderfully incisive account of Anglo-Florentine society with some marvelous portraits of its eccentric members and their febrile entanglements, Queen Bee of Tuscany is both instructive to read and great, great fun.” ―Miranda Seymour, author of Thrumpton Hall and Mary Shelley
“The Anglo-Florentine colony was a remarkable and singularly long-lived phenomenon. Dominating it for sixty years was that extraordinary grande dame Janet Ross: bluff, outspoken, multilingual, at once a canny estate manager and a social queen bee nonpareil. Ben Downing's study of this unique tranche of social history, built around Ross's reign, is a tour de force. Based on formidable research, it always wears its learning lightly, and with style. Elegantly written, packed with anecdotes, it's a real page-turner, and also slyly witty throughout. This is the best, the most informative, the most entertaining bedtime reading that's come my way in a very long time. ” ―Peter Green, Emeritus professor of classics and the former fiction critic of the London Daily Telegraph
“Those enamored with the history, society, and culture of Victorian England and the expatriate community will relish this engrossing biography.” ―Publishers Weekly
About the Author
In addition to The Calligraphy Shop, a book of poems, Ben Downing has published essays, articles, and reviews in The Paris Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. He is the coeditor of Parnassus.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Queen Bee of Tuscany is a delight
By Barbara Blouin
I just finished Ben Downing's Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross. The book is a delight. Downing is a very good writer--fluid, colorful style and often very witty. I had a lot of laughs. Janet Ross is one of a kind: tough, creative, fearless, and always looking for adventure. She started riding to the hounds when in her early teens in rural England, and when in Egypt with her foreign-service husband Henry, she raced across the desert with Egyptian notables. For a time she was a correspondent for the London Times. When Janet and Henry left Egypt in 1868 they went to Tuscany. They had little money, but they managed to buy a rundown mini-castle and convert is to a delightful place. The property came with grapes and olive trees, which were cultivated by the tenant farmers. Never one to be daunted by challenges, Janet pitched in with the contadini (tenant farmers) and stomped on the grapes at harvest time, picked olives, and was always willing to get her hands dirty. Gobs of people -- famous and otherwise -- visited her property, Poggio Gherardo, on Sunday. They included many mostly English notables, like Dickens, as well as an American, Mark Twain. Janet found a house next to hers for Twain and his wife, and they became good friends. In many ways Janet was more man than woman: dauntless, highly energetic, type A. Also creative, sociable. People called her "Aunt Janet." She survived the First World War and died (I don't remember the exact date) not long after WWI. Times were hard, and there was not nearly enough food, but even very late in her life she roused herself to help others, who were close to starvation. Another important feature of this book is a social history of Italy during those years at a time when it was becoming a republic.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Well Written But Not Much New
By Nemoman
Janet Ross was a remarkable person who dominated the English colony centered on Florence in the latter half of the nineteenth cenury. She was born into a family of successful authors including her mother Lady Lucie Duff Gordon Letters From Egypt, and maternal grandmother Sarah Austin. From her early childhood in london she was surrounded by England's literary and social elite, including Kinglake, Dickens, and, Thackery. She was an autodidact with a keen and inquisitive mind. At an early age she married an older banker (Henry Ross) and moved with him to Alexandria. While there she continued to meet and correspond with prominent literary and cultural figures including De Lessups who took her on a tour of Suez Canal during its construction. While in Egypt she developed as a competent, albeit not gifted, writer, become the defacto if not actual Eypt correspondent for the London Times.
When the Egyptian banking crisis ended Henry's banking career in 1862, they moved to Florence. Initially they leased space in a Villa outside of Florence, where she became a competent manager of the Villa's poderes or farms. Later, they purchased Poggio Gherardo, a thirteenth century fortified villa in Settignano. There, she also managed her estate's farms while continuing to write historical books and articles for periodicals. She also wrote a cookbook (cited as an important influence by Elizabeth David LEAVES FROM OUR TUSCAN KITCHEN. She developed a passion for Tuscan folksongs and would sing them while accompanying herself on guitar.
On Sundays she conducted a salon of sorts with visits from noted writers, artists and cultural leaders. She located nearby villas for Bernard Berenson and Mark Twain.
I wrote the bulk of the Wikipedia article on Ross and was hoping this book would help me flesh it out more. Unfortunately, although well written, the book does not add much to the previous biography by Sarah Benjamin - A Castle in Tuscany: The Fascinating Life of Janet Ross - A Woman Ahead of Her Time. It does, however, contain much prefatory matter on the time period preceding Ross, placing in context her life in Florence. Some of that material gets tedious as being pretty much a listing of names.
If you are interested in Janet Ross, I highly recommend books by her niece Lina Waterfield (Castle In Italy An Autobiography) and Kinta Beevor (A Tuscan Childhood) both of whom lived with Janet at various times.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Poorly written book about a potentially fascinating subject
By Book Reader
This light-weight book is written in an irritatingly vernacular style bordering on slang, in fact crossing the border frequently. Worse than that, it is an unparalleled compendium of hackneyed phrases, often ten or twelve per page. This is a pity, because the lives and times of the expatriates of Egypt and Florence at their peaks provide limitless material for an amusing and informative story. The main facts of Janet Ross's life are here but she doesn't really come to life. Some reviewers have complained about an excess of background to the times, but I found this aspect of the book to be its best feature, despite it being ill-informed in places. For example, "In a Tuscan Garden" was written by Georgina S. Grahame, not John Lane - he was the publisher. A great many names are dropped in the Florentine section but that's probably inevitable considering that, aside from her books, entertaining the residents of and visitors to Florence was Janet Ross's main claim to fame over the course of 50 years. In fact, this book is more a history of the Anglo-Florentines hung on the frame of Janet Ross's life - and none the worse for that. There is a huge literature on the Anglo-Florentines including several spectacularly entertaining memoirs. Perhaps the main value of this book is that its bibliography will give readers an entry into that literature.
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing PDF
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing EPub
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing Doc
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing iBooks
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing rtf
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing Mobipocket
Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by Ben Downing Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment