Little Novels of Italy

Little Novels of Italy is an 1899 collection of five Italian Renaissance tales by Maurice Hewlett (1861-1923), the English historical novelist who rose to fame with The Forest Lovers in 1898. The five novellas, including Madonna of the Peach-Tree and Ippolita in the Hills, are set among the city-states of quattrocento Italy and turn on love, honour, and violence in Verona, Padua, Milan, and the hill country, written in the rich mannered prose Hewlett built from his devotion to Tuscan art and the Italian chroniclers. The collection consolidated his reputation as the leading English romancer of medieval and Renaissance Italy, and several of the tales were repeatedly reprinted in anthologies of historical fiction. The book stands with The Queen’s Quair among his most admired Italian works. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.