Alone (book)
Alone is a travel book by Norman Douglas, published in 1921. It brings together essays arising from a 1917 journey through Italy, including Rome and nearby villages. Material had appeared in Edward Hutton’s Anglo-Italian Review before publication as a book.[1]
Contents
The chapters take their names from places, including Siena, Pisa, Viareggio, Rome and several smaller towns. The introduction recounts the narrator’s unsuccessful efforts to obtain government work during the First World War. The first Rome chapter opens with his impressions of a railway station changed by wartime activity, including departing soldiers and families saying farewell.[2]
Style and themes
The book moves between travel observations and personal recollection. In her study of British writing about Italy, Sally Collins describes Douglas’s digressive, humorous approach and his resistance to familiar literary images of Rome. She reads the Rome chapters as combining nostalgia for an earlier city with criticism of modern urban life. By contrast, the narrator’s ideal of a more leisurely existence appears in rural settings.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sally Collins, Representations of Italy and Italians in British Fiction and Travel Writing, 1900–1930 (PhD thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2006), pp. 125–127.
- ↑ Norman Douglas, Alone, Project Gutenberg electronic text, dedication, contents, introduction and first “Rome” chapter. Accessed 10 October 2026.