Being an Italian reader, this book has been a real adventure for me. It's funny to see your country through the eyes of an English author of the XIX century. From Genoa to Florence, from Rome to Naples, my beloved Italy has been told and described by one of the authors I love the most. Descriptions are accurate as usual, and there're also a lot of funny sketches about daily life in Italy. Some pages have made me laugh, some other have made me angry, of course. There's something I'd wish to say to Charles, old chap, about our country and our uses but it's too late to do that, I suppose. What has surprised me the most was the enthusiastic view of Milan, but we should consider that Dickens has visited this town BEFORE the great industrialisation. This is why he tells us about its architectural and artistic beauty, passing through natural spots that perhaps don't even exist anymore. The most interesting feature of these notes (because these ARE notes and nothing more) is how ironically they've been written, but it doesn't surprise me very much. Dickens has always written like that, and it's really interesting to read something of his that is not a novel and that contains the main features of a real, autobiographical logbook.

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A delightful travelogue of Dickens' travels throughout Italy in 1844, "Pictures from Italy" is like a deep, refreshing breath after the angry outbursts of "American Notes" and "Martin Chuzzlewit." This is Dickens at his best observational writing, showing us Italy through his eyes. Unlike his "American Notes," here he has no trouble finding the charm among the squalor and absurdity. He does notice plenty of absurdity, particularly when it comes to Catholicism, the Vatican, and all species of monks. He catalogs almost 2000 years of history, architecture, and art, but it is his description of the people in their everyday lives that truly brings this work to life. As in the best of his novels, Dickens' talent lies in consecrating the mundane. He celebrates the small, the impoverished, the unimportant by simply showing them as real individuals. This is a nice departure from so many 19th century travel writers, who scrabble to impress the reader with the places they have visited, the amazing sights they have seen, and the important people they have mingled with. I enjoyed this trip through Italy immensely.

Itàlia vista per un escriptor anglès, i no un qualsevol, del sXIX. Descripció detallada dels viatges que Charles Dickens fa fer per Itàlia. Permet descobrir una Itàlia ja inexistent en una obra que a trams em fascina i en d'altres trobo les descripcions excesivament detallades i una mica avorrides.

A curious volume from Mr. Dickens. Much better than his "American Notes", perhaps because he seems less disappointed and is more forgiving, but also because it reads less like a reporter's diary and more like a novelist's travelogue. That is, fewer facts and figures about prisons and asylums, more portraits of people and stores of the land. More heart, less head, one could say. Also interesting because one very much senses the development and evolution of the public persona of Dickens here - and that's interesting to watch as well.

Therefore, worth the read if you're a Dickens fan, perhaps not so much if you're not.