Iris Origo

A warm, intimate, and engrossing biography of Francesco di Marco Datini, who built a powerful mercantile network in fourteenth-century Tuscany, and a peerless evocation of the sensations, personalities, and everyday struggles of Italian life more than half a millennium in the past. This extraordinary re-creation of the life of the medieval Italian merchant Francesco di Marco Datini is one of the greatest historical portraits written in the twentieth century. Drawing on an astonishing cache of some 150,000 letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, The Merchant of Prato reveals a shrewd, enterprising, anxious man as he makes deals, furnishes his sumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife, and broods on his legacy. It is an unequaled source of knowledge about the texture of daily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world of fourteenth-century Tuscany.

Iris Origo, one of the twentieth century's great diarists, was born in England in 1902. As a child, she moved between England, Ireland, Italy and America, never quite belonging anywhere. It was only when she married an Italian man that she came to rest in one country. Fifteen years later, that country would be at war with her own. With piercing insight, Origo documents the grim absurdities that her adopted Italy underwent as war became more and more unavoidable. Connected to everyone, from the peasants on her estate to the US ambassador, she writes of the turmoil, the danger, and the dreadful bleakness of Italy in 1939-1940. Published for the first time in paperback, A Chill in the Air is the account of the awful inevitability of Italy's stumble into a conflict for which its people were ill prepared. With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the award-winning author of The Pike, and an afterword by Katia Lysy, granddaughter of Iris Origo, this is the gripping precursor to Origo's bestselling classic diary War in Val d'Orcia.

A bestseller upon its original publication in the 1980s, these diaries reveal life during WWII in Tuscany and include stunning rediscovered photographs In the Second World War, Italy was torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman--born in England, married to an Italian--kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's powerful diary, War in Val d'Orcia, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground. At great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters, and refugees. They took in evacuees, and as the front drew closer they faced the knowledge that the lives of thirty-two small children depended on them. Origo writes with sensitivity and generosity, and a story emerges of human acts of heroism and compassion, and the devastation that war can bring.

This extraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest historical portraits written in the twentieth century.Drawing on an astonishing cache of letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us a shrewd, enterprising, anxious man, as he makes deals, furnishes his sumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods on his legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture of daily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world of fourteenth-century Tuscany.'Datini has now probably become most intimately accessible figure of the later Middle Ages ... brilliant and intricate' The Times'As a picture of Tuscany before the dawn of the Renaissance it is a complement to The Decameron' Sunday Times

The bestselling diaries of WWII in Tuscany, with a new introduction by writer and social historian Virginia Nicholson, and stunning rediscovered photographsAt the height of the Second World War, Italy was being torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the eventual Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman - born in England, married to an Italian - kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's compellingly powerful diary, War in Val d'Orcia, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground. At great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters and refugees. They took in evacuees, and as the front drew closer they faced the knowledge that the lives of thirty-two small children depended on them. Origo writes with sensitivity and generosity, and a story emerges of human acts of heroism and compassion, and the devastation that war can bring.

Under Anden Verdenskrig blev Italien skueplads for voldsomme kampe mellem tyske besættelsestropper og allierede invasionsstyrker. I en dal i det sydlige Toscana førte en kvinde – født i England og italiensk gift – en optegnelse over dagliglivet i et land i krig. Iris Origo (1902-1988) beretter i sin Krigsdagbog fra Toscana stærkt fængslende om en fredelig landbrugsdal, der blev forvandlet til krigsskueplads.Familien Origo gav mad og husly til partisaner, desertører og flygtninge. De tog imod evakuerede, og da fronten rykkede helt tæt på, stod de over for den skræmmende erkendelse, at treogtyve små børns liv afhang af dem. Iris Origo skildrer krigens nære virkelighed med både analytisk omtanke og åbenhjertige bekymringer. Hendes dagbog er således en fortælling om snarrådighed, handlekraft og medmenneskelighed midt i den ødelæggelse, som krig fører med sig.

An extraordinary memoir by Iris Origo, who chronicled political life in A Chill in the Air and War in Val d'Orcia, and now turns inward to describe her own family, the work of writing, and the transcience of memory. Images and Shadows, Iris Origo's autobiographical account of her early life, is as perceptive and humane and beautifully written as her celebrated memoir War in Val d'Orcia. Origo's father came from an old and moneyed American family, her mother was the daughter of an Irish peer, and Iris grew up in the most privileged of circumstances. Her father died of tuberculosis when he was only thirty, and her mother moved to Fiesole, Italy, where she and Iris developed a close friendship with the great connoisseur and art historian Bernard Berenson. Later, Origo and her Italian husband transformed a desolate and deforested Tuscan property into a flourishing estate, and it was there that she discovered her true calling as a writer. In Images and Shadows, Origo paints portraits of her shy, loving father and her headstrong mother, and describes beloved places, the books that formed her sensibility, and how she grew up and made her way in the world. She reflects on the pleasures and challenges of writing and evokes the persistence and fragility of memory. Images and Shadows is an autobiography that is as thoughtful as it is profoundly touching.

An extremely moving account of the lonely life of the unloved and tragic genius - described as "the greatest modern Italian poet" 'Love me, by God; I need love, love, love, fire, enthusiasm, life. The world does not seem made for me' Giacomo Leopardi, considered the greatest Italian poet since Dante, was one of the most radical thinkers of the nineteenth century. He also regarded himself one of the most miserable and unfortunate people to have lived. Born to strict parents in a provincial town in 1798, he had a lonely childhood, and he spent his time largely in his father's library. He suffered from a debilitating illness, and his short life was full of pain. But this pain and misery gave rise to some of the most intense and brilliant poems ever written in the Italian language. In this poetic biography, Iris Origo, author of the bestselling War in Val d'Orcia traces the short and lonely life of this conflicted poet. Written with generosity and understanding, A Study in Solitude is a sharp, moving portrait of a frail and frustrated genius.

The last - and arguably most intense - love affair of one of the greatest British poets Teresa Guiccioli was just nineteen, and recently married to a jealous husband nearly three times her age, when she met Byron. He was one of the most infamous men in Europe; she was an inexperienced but beautiful provincial noblewoman. For the next four years, until Byron went to Greece, this formed the basis of a passionate, scandalous, and very intense love affair. Iris Origo, bestselling biographer and author of War in Val d'Orcia, was the first to have access to over a hundred love letters and family papers from the time of this affair. She uses these to illustrate the moving story, told with authority and clarity, of Byron and Teresa's turbulent romance.