SOURCE: “Italy as an Ideal: Henry B. Fuller's The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani,” in Italian Americana, Vol. VII, No. 1, Fall-Winter, 1981, pp. 75-88.

In the following essay, Morton discusses Fuller's conceptions of culture and civilization as evinced in The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani.

Henry Blake Fuller, a talented writer from Chicago, initially gained recognition in the 1890s with his first book-length work, The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani. This travel-fiction book set in Italy drew the praise of important Italianists like Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell, and their praise helped to secure a hearing for Fuller from American publishers and readers.

Fuller was born in Chicago on January 9, 1857. He could trace his ancestry back to the beginnings of New England through both his parents. His grandfather migrated westward from Massachusetts and ultimately settled in Chicago in 1849. While living in St. Joseph, Michigan, the grandfather became a county judge. In Chicago, Judge...