The second half of the nineteenth century was a momentous time in Italian history, marked by the unification of the peninsula and the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. Three American women writers had a front-seat view of this history while they lived in Italy: Caroline Crane Marsh, the wife of the United States Minister; journalist Anne Hampton Brewster; and Emily Bliss Gould, founder of a vocational school for Italian children.

Joining me to help us learn more about these American women in Italy in the late 19th Century is Dr. Etta Madden, the Clif & Gail Smart Professor of English at Missouri State University and author of several books, including Engaging Italy: American Women's Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Photo credits: Engraving of Emily Bliss Gould, by A.H. Ritchie, based on a portrait by Lorenzo Suszipj, in A Life Worth Living, by Leonard Woolsey Bacon, 1879, Public Domain; Anne Hampton Brewster, Albumen photograph, ca. 1874, McAllister Collection, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Caroline Crane Marsh, ca 1866, Fratelli Alinari, Florence, Special Collections Library, University of Vermont. 

Additional Sources:

• “How Italy became a country, in one animated map,” by Zack Beauchamp, Vox, December 1, 2014.


• “Issues Relevant to U.S. Foreign Diplomacy: Unification of Italian States,” Office of the Historian, US Department of State.


• “The Italian Risorgimento: A timeline,” The Florentine, March 10, 2011.


• “About George Perkins Marsh,” The Marsh Collection, Smithsonian.


• “Ambasciatrice, Activist, Auntie, Author: Caroline Crane Marsh,” by Etta Madden, New York Public Library, December 19, 2018.


• “Traveling with Caroline Crane Marsh,” University of Vermont Special Collections, June 11, 2020.


• “Anne Hampton Brewster,” Archival Gossip Collection.


• “Anne Hampton Brewster: Nineteenth-Century News from Rome,” by Etta Madden, November 21, 2018.


• “Anne Hampton Brewster papers finding aid,” Library Company of Philadelphia.


• “Emily Bliss Gould: An American in Italy–A Guest Post,” by Etta Madden, History in the Margins, September 30, 2022.

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