ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a reference to Eisenstein’s admiring observations on the cinematic aspects of Charles Dickens’s vision. Pictures from Italy was the outcome of a long visit to Italy which Dickens undertook in 1844, and was partially published first of all in the radical newspaper, the Daily News, which he founded in 1846. It is worth mentioning from the start that Dickens does not set up an opposition between ‘books’ and ‘pictures’ in the broader sense, but between the tradition of travel literature, on the one hand, and on the other a very special sort of picture: the image recorded faintly and fleetingly by the sun. Dickens’s posture as an English traveller in a Catholic country bears some comparison with that of the trio led by the Kentish gentleman, John Bargrave, which made a similar journey just under two centuries before, and published the first English guidebook to Italy in consequence.
