This richly illustrated history not only provided a constant source of reference, but pointed the way to other texts that proved to be of value, most notably Monica Stirling’s The Fine and the Wicked: The Life and Times of Ouida (Gollancz, 1957) and Eric Linklater’s The Art of Adventure (Macmillan, 1947). Hibbert was also the source for quotations from Walter Savage Landor and William Holman Hunt on the ‘stinks’ of Florence, Henry James on Vernon Lee, and Luca Landucci on the original moving of the David. Finally, a fascinating image of the second moving of the David, reproduced in Hibbert, provoked my research on that subject.I began my study of the Anglo-Florentine colony by reading the only two books on the subject in English: Olive Hamilton’s Paradise of Exiles: Tuscany and the British (André Deutsch, 1974) and The Divine Country: The British in Tuscany 1372-1980 (André Deutsch, 1982), by the same author. I also consulted Giuliana Artom Treves’ Anglo-Fiorentini di cento anni fa (Sansoni, 1953; reprinted 1982).Although many novels have been set in Florence, none approaches, in my view, E.M.
