Genius Loci

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the Franco-British writer Violet Paget (1856-1935). For over 50 years, Paget churned out works of both fiction and nonfiction at the rate of nearly a book a year. Perhaps best remembered today for her supernatural short stories, Paget produced a number of books with essays about travel and place. Genius Loci: Notes on Places (1899) was her first. Genius Loci is not a guidebook or a novel, but an intimate diary or, better said, a series of billets-doux to the places with which Paget has fallen in love. In the book, Paget offers vignettes and postcard-like snapshots of the memory and life of someone who attempted to breathe in the essence of Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland. Paget's reflections and her erudite insights into the histories of place, art, and literature shine as brightly as they are fleeting. Though her travel writing is little read today, her presence is felt in contemporary travel literature. Genius Loci represents travel for the sake of travel, experience for the sake of experience, love for the sake of love, and, not least, art for the sake of art. This Adventures in Ideas reissue contains a new foreword by Jeremy Bassetti.

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the Franco-British writer Violet Paget (1856-1935). For over 50 years, Paget churned out works of both fiction and nonfiction at the rate of nearly a book a year. Perhaps best remembered today for her supernatural short stories, Paget produced a number of books with essays about travel and place.Genius Loci: Notes on Places(1899) was her first. Genius Lociis not a guidebook or a novel, but an intimate diary or, better said, a series of billets-doux to the places with which Paget has fallen in love. In the book, Paget offers vignettes and postcard-like snapshots of the memory and life of someone who attempted to breathe in the essence of Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland. Paget's reflections and her erudite insights into the histories of place, art, and literature shine as brightly as they are fleeting. Though her travel writing is little read today, her presence is felt in contemporary travel literature. Genius Locirepresents travel for the sake of travel, experience for the sake of experience, love for the sake of love, and, not least, art for the sake of art. This Adventures in Ideas reissue contains a new foreword by Jeremy Bassetti.

For Romans, genius loci was literally ‘the genius of the place’, the presiding divinity who inhabited a site and gave it meaning; while we are less attuned to divinity today, we still sense that a place has significance. In this book, eminent garden historian John Dixon Hunt explores genius loci in many settings, including contemporary land art, the paintings of Paul and John Nash, the work of the travel writers such as Henry James, Paul Theroux and Lawrence Durrell on Provence, Mexico and Cyprus, and landscape architects who invent new meanings for a site. This is a nuanced, thoughtful exploration of how places become more significant to us through the myriad ways we see, talk about and remember them.

For Romans, genius loci was literally ‘the genius of the place’, the presiding divinity who inhabited a site and gave it meaning; while we are less attuned to divinity today, we still sense that a place has significance. In this book, eminent garden historian John Dixon Hunt explores genius loci in many settings, including contemporary land art, the paintings of Paul and John Nash, the work of the travel writers such as Henry James, Paul Theroux and Lawrence Durrell on Provence, Mexico and Cyprus, and landscape architects who invent new meanings for a site. This is a nuanced, thoughtful exploration of how places become more significant to us through the myriad ways we see, talk about and remember them.