ИСТИНА

At a Fair Distance is a collection of studies on Italian Risorgimento performed by international scholars. It offers a view “from another angle,” within a context—the 150th anniversary of Italian unification—that has generally been arranged “by Italians for Italians,” lacking that particular resourcefulness and often impartiality that international scholarship was able to contribute to the Risorgimento’s historiography. The book is ideally articulated in four sections. In the first one, Adrian Lyttelton, Bruce Haddock, and Joseph Luzzi refer to the general problems raised by the Risorgimento as a phenomenon, as a historical “container” of events, as a myth. In the second one, the importance of the hundreds of topical histories that surround the “main events” is exemplified through the case of Giuseppe Verdi, discussed by Philip Gossett, Peter Stamatov, and Andreas Giger. In the third section, the reader has the opportunity to learn about the attention that Italian events and characters received in other countries: it is the case of Dennis Berthold’s essay on the depiction of Garibaldi in America, and the volume’s Appendix, collecting the articles that the New York Times published during March 1861. Finally, three essays will illustrate how international characters displayed sympathies for, and played leading roles in, the events of Risorgimento: it is the case of Thomas H. Schmid with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Carol E. Harrison with Pauline Craven, and Sandra M. Gilbert with Elizabeth Barrett Browning.