"Vernon Lee e l'Italia una scelta felice", Friday 13 February, conference di RITA SEVERI introduct by Serena Cenni in Italian

Rita Severi, who taught English language and literature at the University of Verona for over thirty years, has published books and essays in Italian and English on the Victorian period, Oscar Wilde, Ronald Firbank, Vernon Lee, Maurice Hewlett, Shakespeare and Anglo-Italian relations during the Renaissance. A member of CIRVI, she specialises in English-speaking travellers in Italy. Since 2018, she has published: William Dean Howells, Viaggi in Italia (2018) and the volume Art Shakespeare (2018, Bologna, Patron). In 2019, she published Oscar Wilde il Canto del Cigno and in 2023 Edith Wharton una scrittrice americana in Italia, both with Mursia editore Milano.

She has always taken great pleasure in working on the works of Vernon Lee, beginning with a bilingual edition of Ariadne in Mantua/Arianna a Mantova, Edizione Postumia-Gazoldo degli Ippoliti, Verona, Cierre Edizioni, 1996, which revived interest in the writer's works. Other essays on Vernon Lee: Vernon Lee and Mantua, in “Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies”, vol. 5 (1998)9, pp. 174–200; Vernon Lee through the Enchanted Woods of Travel Writing, in Dalla Stanza Accanto. Vernon Lee e Firenze Settant’anni dopo, edited by S. Cenni and E. Bizzotto, Florence, Consiglio Regionale Toscano, 2005, pp. 219–228; Vernon Lee at Verona/ A Verona, in M. Hewlett, Madonna of the Peach Tree/ Madonna del Pesco, Bologna, Patron, 2007, pp. 117–125.

She recently focused on Vernon Lee's visits to the Modena area in an article for the Deputazione di Storia Patria (2024). In another article, she investigated Vernon Lee's interest in Trento, an itinerary little visited by critics but illuminating in terms of her tastes and methods.