The journal of Samuel Rogers : an alternative version of Italy

Abstract

Nowadays Samuel Rogers is best known as the author of Italy, yet precisely what is meant by that title is often far from clear. The publication history of this poem, or more correctly this book, is unexpectedly complicated since over a number of years it appeared in several, rather different, versions with the result that it now has more than one bibliographical identity. The first volume appeared in 1822; the second, after three revised versions of the first, in 1828; and the justifiably celebrated illustrated edition in 1830. Yet Rogers and his publishers introduced changes (such as full-page illustrations of a farewell to Italy) at least as late as 1838 and 1839. Although Rogers liked to insist on the authenticity of Italy and its closeness to original experience, there was from the first a striking gap between the events which it chronicles and the record of the poem itself. Even the first volume had been published, anonymously if identifiably, some years after his first visit to a country which deeply impressed him and answered comfortably to many of his poetic and cultural preconceptions. This first volume does not include several poems which later formed part of the larger whole (specifically, 'Meillerie', 'St Maurice', 'The Brothers' and 'Bologna'); most significantly, perhaps, its earliest version contains none of the seven prose essays which at first disgruntled at least one critic but eventually constituted a generic counterpoint within the volume itself and allowed Rogers to include passages of historical narrative (in effect, short stories with a tendency towards the sentimental and the moralistic) and brief essays on subjects such as foreign travel and national prejudices.