Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della instituzion delle donne secondo li tre stati che cadono nella vita umana (1545)
Edited by Helena Sanson
Critical Texts 30•1 June 2015

Nelle Carceri di G. B. Piranesi
Silvia Gavuzzo-Stewart
Italian Perspectives 2•31 October 1999

Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Culture's Appropriation of a Baroque Genius
Laura Rorato
Italian Perspectives 30•1 November 2014

Futurism: A Microhistory
Edited by Sascha Bru, Luca Somigli, and Bart Van den Bossche
Italian Perspectives 36•29 September 2017

  • ‘The chapter structure is cleverly designed to replicate a ‘day in the life’ of a Futurist ‘new man’, with chapters focusing on places both large and small from ‘The Skyscraper’ to ‘The Bed’... This book was a pleasure to read and will reward both the serious scholar of Futurism and the more casual reader of twentieth-century Italian culture who may wish to dip in and out of the Futurist day.’ — Selena Daly, Modern Language Review 114.3, July 2019, 577-579 (full text online)

Venetian Inscriptions: Vernacular Writing for Public Display in Medieval and Renaissance Venice
Ronnie Ferguson
Italian Perspectives 50•26 July 2021

  • ‘The rigorous standards of the author’s nearly decade-long project will certainly satisfy professional historians, but lay readers too will find themselves thoroughly engaged by the manner in which he uses each inscription vividly to evoke multiple aspects of Venice’s social, religious, cultural and political life, as well as the characters of some remarkable individuals.’ — Roderick Conway Morris, Times Literary Supplement 21 January 2022
  • ‘A short review cannot do justice to the rich array of insights and ideas that thread through this fascinating book, nor can it reflect the dedication and time that were needed to compile the catalogue. Ranging from the familiar to the seemingly unnoticed, these inscriptions add myriad fragments to the enormous jigsaw of the townscape of late medieval and Renaissance Venice.’ — Deborah Howard, Burlington Magazine 165, February 2023, 207-08
  • ‘The Italian Perspectives series, founded by Zygmunt Barański and Laura Lepschy in 1998, reaches its half-century in impressive fashion with this outstanding work of scholarship... As well as making a major contribution to epigraphy, the volume includes a wealth of information on the urban fabric, society, culture, and language that will make it an invaluable resource for Venetian Studies during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.’ — Brian Richardson, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 258-60 (full text online)

Britain and Italy from Romanticism to Modernism: A Festschrift for Peter Brand
Edited by Martin McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) •1 November 2000

  • ‘The book concludes with a useful bibliography of Peter Brand's work and offers a valuable résumé of work in the field since Brand's pioneering study.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 91
  • ‘This rich and varied collection of essays... a worthy homage to Peter Brand.’ — Carmine G. di Biase, Italica 79.4, 2002, 568-72
  • ‘A volume that, with its interlacing strands, very effectively offers a picture of the complex relationship between two cultures reciprocally illuminating each other in often unpredictable ways.’ — Laura Lepschy, Modern Language Review 98.2, 2003, 482-3 (full text online)
  • ‘Une présentation très claire, dans laquelle toutefois le titre peut paraïtre trompeur, car il resterait à explorer, pendant cette même période, ce qu'apporte précisément cet autre aspect de la culture moderne italienne qu'est par exemple sa production romanesque. On songe à Manzoni (1785-1873) dont l'èuvre reflète à bien des égards le passage du Romantisme au Modernisme.’ — Annie Dubernard Laurent, Revue de littérature comparée 3, 2002, 381-3

Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy
Edited by Guido Bonsaver and Robert Gordon
Legenda (General Series) •13 September 2005

Image and Word: Reflections of Art and Literature
Edited by Antonella Braida and Giuliana Pieri
Legenda (General Series) •1 June 2003

Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society
Edited by Letizia Panizza
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2000

  • ‘In her introduction Letizia Panizza writes that one of the aims of the collection is to recover neglected areas of Italian culture and society, which she has done... Many of the essays are quite good; all are informative.’ — Elissa B. Weaver, Renaissance Quarterly 2002, 713-15
  • ‘Offers a vast and well-organized view of the position that early modern women occupied in Italy from 1400 to 1650... I highly recommend the collection.’ — Rinaldini Russell, Forum Italicum 36.1, 2002, 214-15
  • ‘The above is merely a fraction of the content. There is certainly richness in this volume. Many branches of scholarship gain by having these articles in print and they are an eloquent testimony to the vitality of scholarship in this area.’ — Olwen Hufton, Modern Language Review 97.1, 2002 (full text online)
  • ‘This excellent book of essays... retains the liveliness and originality of the conference held at Royal Holloway, University of London, ... with the added bonus that all those given in Italian have been translated, so that - as the editor says - we can benefit from the work of many specialists, some of whose work has not previously been available in English.’ — Alison Brown, Italian Studies LVII, 2002, 171-2
  • ‘Without doubt, the most important volume yet published in English on the specific contribution of women to culture and society in Italy in the Renaissance... The coherence of the volume is assured by a number of overarching themes.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XXXIX, 2003, 480

Image, Eye and Art in Calvino: Writing Visibility
Edited by Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin and Lene Waage Petersen
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2007

  • ‘Andrea Battistini's chapter, finally, is one of the most enjoyable; it could be defined as the critical equivalent of Eco’s novel La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana, in the sense that it shows quite convincingly how the "fantastic iconology of cartoons" and comic books is deeply rooted in Calvino's imagination and how this could be traced in his narrative style, also testifying to the extent of Calvino's engagement with the products of mass culture.’ — Pierpaolo Antonello, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 210-12 (full text online)
  • ‘These notes give but a hint of the richness of Image, Eye and Art in Calvino. This is a compelling volume for Calvino scholars; it should also have a strong appeal for those more generally interested in the relation between the verbal and the visual.’ — Luca Pocci, Angles on the English-Speaking World 8, 2008, 127-29
  • ‘A vital tool for further research not only into the works of Calvino but also into the contemporary cultural interweaving of literature and the arts.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011

Pietro Bembo: A Life in Laurels and Scarlet
Marco Faini
Legenda (General Series) •15 May 2017

  • ‘Faini has managed very effectively the task of providing an introduction to Bembo’s life and work that is insightful yet relatively succinct and accessible. He gives a good sense of the complexity of underlying issues without overwhelming readers with detail. His writing is engaging and attentive to descriptive effect... Helpfully and attractively illustrated.’ — Brian Richardson, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 884-86 (full text online)
  • ‘As this slim but elegant volume highlights, the life of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) bridges the transition in Italy from the height of the Renaissance into the early stages of the Catholic Reformation, not simply in terms of chronology but also in his career trajectory... This is a beautifully illustrated work, with more than 30 images, many of which are in colour. It is an engaging treatment and an excellent introduction to this significant figure.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.2, July 2019, 266 (full text online)
  • ‘La rédaction de cette biographie a été confiée à un jeune et brillant chercheur, Fellow de la Villa I Tatti, un des meilleurs connaisseurs du personnage. Marco Faini s'est acquitté de cette tâche difficile avec une réelle finesse littéraire.’ — Jean Balsamo, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 79.1, 2017, 262-65

The Italian Renaissance: A Zest for Life
Edited by Michel Jeanneret and Nicolas Ducimetière
Legenda (General Series) •15 May 2017

  • ‘This is a Renaissance that triumphantly emerges from the dark ages of medieval Europe, bringing with it the birth of an ideal society guided by beauty and love, thus giving rise to one of the most extraordinary creative seasons of poetry, architecture, and art that the world has ever known... Yves Bonnefoy gives a moving account of his youthful discovery, in a still deserted post-war Florence, of the Brancacci Chapel... The most remarkable pages, however, of these many and memorable contributions are those by Michel Butor, sadly deceased in the same year in which the book was published. Always concerned with ‘micro-événements’ [...] Butor simply fixes his (and our) attention on every tiny detail of Antonello da Messina’s Renaissance image of the Middle Ages in his painting of Saint Jerome in his Study, reading (one presumes) his own historic translation of the Bible. The sense of this descriptive tour de force becomes clear in a final poem in which Butor identifies himself with Antonello.’ — Hilary Gatti, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 887-89 (full text online)

Holocaust Intersections: Genocide and Visual Culture at the New Millennium
Edited by Axel Bangert, Robert S. C. Gordon and Libby Saxton
Moving Image 4•25 September 2013

  • ‘The 'millennium' of this book's title stands for the reconstitution of Europe since the end of the Cold War - one effect of which has been an enhanced knowledge of the Holocaust based on archives in the former Eastern Bloc - and for the rise of digital media during the same period.’ — Henry K. Miller, Sight & Sound April 2014, 106

Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination
Elisa Segnini
Studies In Comparative Literature 56•26 July 2021

  • ‘The wide-ranging approach of the book, which also engages with recent debates in decadence and early modernist studies, openly challenges the “abrupt separation between authors associated with the ‘half-mock interlude of decadence’ and those considered exponents of symbolism, and thus part of early modernism”... The author keeps steady command of her arguments while navigating and scrutinising several artifacts from different cultures, though of course each case study shows its own fine tuning.’ — Giulio Milone, Synergies 2, 2021, 65-68 (full text online)
  • ‘Elisa Segnini leads her readers on a journey through fin-de-siècle Europe with one extra stop in Japan. The universe unveiled by Segnini is populated by uncanny mask makers, men in drag, grotesque masquerades, deathly plaster casts, gruesome masks of exceptional men, criminals, and deviants... A distinctive contribution to a field that can only benefit from engaging with the anthropological, medical, and legal discourse that underlies the artistic production of the fin de siècle.’ — Alessandra Crotti, Rivista di studi vittoriani 53, 2022, 121-25

The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation
Jamie McKendrick
Transcript 17•28 September 2020

  • ‘This book might have been written for my pleasure. Many readers of this journal will surely feel the same.’ — Chris Miller, PN Review 28.3, January/February 2022
  • ‘There is a natural clemency at work, throughout the entire volume, which has nothing to do with fuzzy-mindedness – quite the contrary, but it means that McKendrick will never deliver the frenzied hatchet-job some poets (whom he admires) can execute, apparently with sangfroid. This intelligence – by definition an ironic intelligence in that it can simultaneously entertain different positions – is what makes him such a trustworthy guide. One feels also that humour, that saving resource, is always within reach... His astute use of quotation to illustrate a point is a fiduciary of sound judgement. Above all, Jamie McKendrick reminds us that there is no substitute for patient looking and listening. This close attention, this authentic love of the art, is rare in our day. These writings are to be prized.’ — Stephen Romer, The London Magazine February/March 2022, 77-84
  • ‘A welcome marker to remind us, if we needed reminding, of how much human beings need, and gain from, dialogue with other cultures and languages. The apparently foreign, as Jamie McKendrick demonstrates so well here, in fact shows us a threshold, a door.’ — Hilary Davies, Times Literary Supplement 19 May 2023, p. 8
  • ‘What Jamie McKendrick so finely details about Tom Lubbock’s English Graphic is an entirely apt description for his own collection of brief reviews, introductions, and essays, on literature and art: ‘The constraints of the form proved exceptionally viable and liberating for his procedures. Providing a “wiry outline”, the form itself allowed for wit, aperçu, mental calisthenics, provocation, aphorism, meditation and surprisingly sustained argument’.’ — George Kalogeris, Essays in Criticism 73.1, 2023, 130-31 (full text online)

The Influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on Fin-de-Siècle Italy: Art, Beauty, and Culture
Giuliana Pieri
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 65•14 January 2007