A Summer and Winter in The Two Sicilies (in Two Volumes) by [WOMEN TRAVELERS] KAVANAGH, Julia - 1858

London: Hurst and Blackett, 1858. First Edition. Two volumes; small octavo (19cm); late 19th /early 20th-c. half-morocco over green cloth boards; marbled page edges; engraved frontispiece to each volume; vignette title pages; vii,[1]-333 + [1]-316pp. Small marginal perforation at gutter of v.1, leaf R1 (pp.241-242); closed marginal tears to leaves N5-8 in v.2 (pp 187-192), in both cases with no loss to text. Else a fresh, Very Good or better set in an attractive period binding. Ex-libris "The Countess Dow[ager] of Carnarvon" (likely Elizabeth Catherine Howard, 1857-1929, second wife of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon). The Earls of Carnarvon are the hereditary proprietors of Highclere Castle, made famous as the locale for the popular television series "Downton Abbey." Popular account of Mediterranean travel by the prolific Irish novelist and essayist. Kavanagh (1824-1877) spent most of her adult life in France, supporting herself and her mother on the proceeds from her writings, which were numerous; in addition to several novels (the best-known being Nathalie, 1851) Kavanagh published volumes of critical essays, devotional works, books for children, and many stories and short pieces for periodicals. Kavanagh's concern with gender and society inflected much of her published work, and this is perhaps most true of her travel writing, a genre which afforded her the opportunity to couch social critique in the form of casual observation. As one modern critic has noted, "...as a hybrid genre, travel writing...gave women such as Kavanagh the opportunity to write on historical and political themes and to compare the position of women in British society with that of women in other countries.." (see Anne O'Connor, "Travel Literature and Traveling Irishness: an Italian Case Study," in Traveling Irishness in the Long Nineteenth Century, Marguerite Corporaal and Christina Morin, eds, Lon: 2017).