The Countess of Albany

The Countess of Albany

In preparing this volume on the Countess of Albany (which I consider as a kind of completion of my previous studies of eighteenth-century Italy), I have availed myself largely of Baron Alfred von Reumont's large work Die Grfin von Albany (published in 1862); and of the monograph, itself partially founded on the foregoing, of M. St. Ren Taillandier, entitled La Comtesse d'Albany, published in Paris in 1862. Baron von Reumont's two volumes, written twenty years ago and when the generation which had come into personal contact with the Countess of Albany had not yet entirely died out; and M. St. Ren Taillandier's volume, which embodied the result of his researches into the archives of the Muse Fabre at Montpellier; might naturally be expected to have exhausted all the information obtainable about the subject of their and my studies. This has proved to be the case very much less than might have been anticipated. The publication, by Jacopo Bernardi and Carlo Milanesi, of a number of letters of Alfieri to Sienese friends, has afforded me an insight into Alfieri's character and his relations with the Countess of Albany such as was unattainable to Baron von Reumont and to M. St. Ren Taillandier. The examination, by myself and my friend Signor Mario Pratesi, of several hundreds of MS. letters of the Countess of Albany existing in public and private archives at Siena and at Milan, has added an important amount of what I may call psychological detail, overlooked by Baron von Reumont and unguessed by M. St. Ren Taillandier. I have, therefore, I trust, been able to reconstruct the Countess of Albany's spiritual likeness during the periodthat of her early connection with Alfieriwhich my predecessors have been satisfied to despatch in comparatively few pages, counterbalancing the thinness of this portion of their biographies by a degree of detail concerning the Countess's latter years, and the friends with whom she then corresponded, which, however interesting, cannot be considered as vital to the real subject of their works. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 28268
Author: Lee, Vernon
Release Date: Mar 7, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English