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Chaucer's Italy
Richard Owen
Haus Publishing, 2022
An exploration of the influence of Italy and Italians on Chaucer’s life and writing.
 
Geoffrey Chaucer might be considered the quintessential English writer, but he drew much of his inspiration and material from Italy. In fact, without the tremendous influence of Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio (among others), the author of The Canterbury Tales might never have assumed his place as the “father” of English literature. Nevertheless, Richard Owen’s Chaucer’s Italy begins in London, where the poet dealt with Italian merchants in his roles as court diplomat and customs official. Next Owen takes us, via Chaucer’s capture at the siege of Rheims, to his involvement in arranging the marriage of King Edward III’s son Lionel in Milan and his missions to Genoa and Florence. By scrutinizing his encounters with Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the mercenary knight John Hawkwood—and with vividly evocative descriptions of the Arezzo, Padua, Florence, Certaldo, and Milan that Chaucer would have encountered—Owen reveals the deep influence of Italy’s people and towns on Chaucer’s poems and stories. Much writing on Chaucer depicts a misleadingly parochial figure, but as Owen’s enlightening short study of Chaucer’s Italian years makes clear, the poet’s life was internationally eventful. The consequences have made the English canon what it is today.
 
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DH Lawrence in Italy
Richard Owen
Haus Publishing, 2014
November 1925: In search of health and sun, the writer D. H. Lawrence arrives on the Italian Riviera with his wife, Frieda, and is exhilarated by the view of the sparkling Mediterranean from his rented villa, set amid olives and vines. But over the next six months, Frieda will be fatally attracted to their landlord, a dashing Italian army officer. This incident of infidelity influenced Lawrence to write two short stories, “Sun” and “The Virgin and the Gypsy,” in which women are drawn to earthy, muscular men, both of which prefigured his scandalous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover

In DH Lawrence in Italy, Owen reconstructs the drama leading up to the creation of one of the most controversial novels of all time by drawing on the unpublished letters and diaries of Rina Secker, the Anglo-Italian wife of Lawrence’s publisher. In addition to telling the story of the origins of Lady Chatterley, DH Lawrence in Italy explores Lawrence’s passion for all things Italian, tracking his path to the Riviera from Lake Garda to Lerici, Abruzzo, Capri, Sicily, and Sardinia.
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Hemingway in Italy
Richard Owen
Haus Publishing, 2017
Ernest Hemingway is most often associated with Spain and Cuba, but Italy was equally important in his life and work. Hemingway in Italy, the first full-length book exploring Hemmingway’s penchant for Italy, offers a lively account of the many visits Hemingway made throughout his life to Italian locales, including Sicily, Genoa, Rapallo, Cortina, and Venice. 

In evocative prose, complemented by a rich selection of historical images, Richard Owen takes us on a tour through Hemingway’s Italy. He describes how Hemingway first visited the country of the Latins during World War I, an experience that set the scene for A Farewell to Arms. Then after World War II, it was in Italy that he found inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees. Again and again, the Italian landscape—from the Venetian lagoon to the Dolomites and beyond—deeply affected one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Hemingway in Italy demonstrates that Italy stands alongside Spain as a key influence on Hemingway’s work—and why the Italians themselves hold Hemingway and his writing close to their hearts.
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The Hunterian Lectures in Comparative Anatomy, May and June 1837
Richard Owen
University of Chicago Press, 1992
Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), comparative anatomist, colleague and later antagonist of Darwin, and head of the British Museum (Natural History), was a major figure in Victorian science, and one of the least well known. Historians of science have found Owen a difficult subject, partly because he seldom wrote at length about his theories of the nature of life. However, his contemporaries—Darwin, Lyell, Grant, Huxley, and others—certainly knew his ideas and agreed or argued with him while developing their own views.

Now, for the first time, modern readers may consult the single sustained exposition of his views that Owen ever provided: his Hunterian Lectures. Phillip Reid Sloan has transcribed and edited the seven surviving lectures and has written an introduction and commentary that situate this work in the context of Owen's life and the scientific life of the time. The lectures survey some of the history of comparative anatomy since Aristotle and draw on work by some of Owen's contemporaries. Their chief value, however, lies in Owen's elucidation of his own view on the relationships among various groups of living things.

"Owen is one of the linchpin figures of Victorian science. The publication of these lectures is important, and Sloan is to be commended for a fine transcription."—Adrian Desmond, University College, London
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Lady Chatterley's Villa
D. H. Lawrence on the Italian Riviera
Richard Owen
Haus Publishing, 2014
November 1925 found David and Frieda Lawrence on the Italian Riviera, looking for sun, sea air, and health. The Lawrences were exhilarated by life in their rented villa, set amid olive groves and vineyards, with a view of the sparkling Mediterranean. The drab English winter couldn’t have been farther away.

But before long Frieda found herself irresistibly attracted to their landlord, a dashing Italian army officer, and the resulting affair served as the background for Lawrence’s writing: while in the villa, he turned out two stories, “Sun” and “The Virgin and the Gypsy,” both prefiguring Lady Chatterley’s Lover in their depiction of women fatally drawn to earthy, muscular men.

Built on the unpublished, and previously unexplored, letters and diaries of Rina Secker, the Anglo-Italian wife of Lawrence’s publisher, and featuring never-before-published letters from Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Villa reconstructs the drama of the tempestuous marriage, and the ways it fired Lawrence’s creativity. Along the way, Richard Owen offers a new accounting of Lawrence’s passion for Italy, tracing his travels along the coasts and islands and his deep engagement with Italian culture. This exploration of a little-studied, but crucial period of the writer’s life will be a must for Lawrence’s many fans.
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On the Nature of Limbs
A Discourse
Richard Owen
University of Chicago Press, 2007
The most prominent naturalist in Britain before Charles Darwin, Richard Owen made empirical discoveries and offered theoretical innovations that were crucial to the proof of evolution. Among his many lasting contributions to science was the first clear definition of the term homology—“the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function.” He also graphically demonstrated that all vertebrate species were built on the same skeletal plan and devised the vertebrate archetype as a representation of the simplest common form of all vertebrates.

Just as Darwin’s ideas continue to propel the modern study of adaptation, so too will Owen’s contributions fuel the new interest in homology, organic form, and evolutionary developmental biology. His theory of the archetype and his views on species origins were first offered to the general public in On the Nature of Limbs, published in 1849. It reemerges here in a facsimile edition with introductory essays by prominent historians, philosophers, and practitioners from the modern evo-devo community.
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Richard Owen
Biology without Darwin
Nicolaas A. Rupke
University of Chicago Press, 2009

In the mid-1850s, no scientist in the British Empire was more visible than Richard Owen. Mentioned in the same breath as Isaac Newton and championed as Britain’s answer to France’s Georges Cuvier and Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt, Owen was, as the Times declared in 1856, the most “distinguished man of science in the country.” But, a century and a half later, Owen remains largely obscured by the shadow of the most famous Victorian naturalist of all, Charles Darwin. Publicly marginalized by his contemporaries for his critique of natural selection, Owen suffered personal attacks that undermined his credibility long after his name faded from history.

With this innovative biography, Nicolaas A. Rupke resuscitates Owen’s reputation. Arguing that Owen should no longer be judged by the evolution dispute that figured in  only a minor part of his work, Rupke stresses context, emphasizing the importance of places and practices in the production and reception of scientific knowledge. Dovetailing with the recent resurgence of interest in Owen’s life and work, Rupke’s book brings the forgotten naturalist back into the canon of the history of science and demonstrates how much biology existed with, and without, Darwin

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