Leonardo Buonomo, in his study of pre-1870 American representations of Italy, argues that American writers of the period were, for many reasons, hard pressed to write about Italy as it really was: "the impression is, at times, that what is depicted by certain American writers is not a country inhabited by real people, with concrete . . . problems and needs. It is rather a gigantic picture, or a stage where a performance is continually held for the sake of a foreign audience" (15). In other words, what these writers represent is not something real but something literary.

As part of his far-ranging study of nineteenth-century tourism and travel writing, James Buzard argues (173-77) that guidebooks presented only one side of Continental Europe and therefore excluded any representation of the more prosaic--but certainly very real--parts of everyday European life. Naturally, tourists traveling great distances had no special wish to visit "'butchers' stalls, grocers' shops, [and] pedlars' booths,'" but at the same time any attempt to experience and represent authentic foreign life would be doomed if it excluded "such mundane presences" (174).