New at RC Editions: An Uninteresting Detail of a Journey to Rome, by Ann Flaxman

Romantic Circles is pleased to announce the publication of a new digital edition, Ann Flaxman’s An Uninteresting Detail of a Journey to Rome, edited by Marie E. McAllister.

http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/flaxman/index.html

This previously unpublished work tells the story of a female Grand Tour, something quite rare, and of an extended artist's visit to Italy, something quite common. In 1787 Flaxman set out for France and Italy with her husband, the sculptor John Flaxman, and a small company of fellow travelers. During her journey and in the months that followed her arrival in Rome, Flaxman kept a perceptive and entertaining journal for the benefit of friends at home, a group that included William and Catherine Blake. Personal yet nonetheless typical of its genre, Flaxman's Journey serves as an excellent introduction to English travel writing just before the French Revolution, and to the late-eighteenth-century international arts scene. It also reveals the challenges and rewards of being an atypically poor traveler and an aspiring woman writer.