Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions is a 1911 travel volume by Henry Festing Jones (1851-1928), the English barrister and writer who was Samuel Butler’s closest friend and his literary executor. After Butler’s death in 1902, Jones gathered and edited Butler’s notebooks and prepared the standard two-volume Memoir of Samuel Butler published in 1919. Castellinaria continues the genre of leisurely English travel writing on Sicily that Butler and Jones had developed together in the 1890s during their many summer trips to the island. The book is named for the seaside town of Castellinaria, a thin fictional cover for Calatafimi or a similar Trapani-area town where Jones returned for holidays, and gathers conversations with locals, opera anecdotes, and sketches of village life in early twentieth-century Sicily. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.