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“... pessimism and disgust toward life’. As it turns out, the book is more Marie Curie than Mario Praz. Roger Williams, a Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wyoming, has supped his full of horror. He opens with a modest disclaimer: he began this study ‘with the understanding that all five had been syphilitic, and with the ...”

“... a saint from thirty-odd depictions of heaven on earth (‘what peace desired of man,’ Mario Praz remarked, ‘has ever held greater enchantment than that which breathes from Vermeer’s interiors?’). Vermeer’s genius lies partly in his subtle variations on stock scenarios: as Bailey points out, he frequently ‘showed no originality in ...”

“... Historian, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, THANKS from your affect. Vernon.’ Baring shared with Mario Praz admiration for Vernon Lee as one of a dying breed, an elegant and erudite woman who chose females for her companions, but could never bring herself to take the risk of an intimate relationship. ‘I cannot like, or love, at the expense of having ...”

“... Last year, the year of his death, Mario Praz’s An Illustrated History of Interior Decoration was once again made available, after being out of print for a decade. William Weaver’s English translation of La Filosofia dell’ Arredamento was first published in 1964, which means that there were about ten years when you could buy it new, and then about ten years when you couldn’t ...”

“... that led the populist critic N.K. Mikhailovsky to call Dostoevsky ‘a cruel talent’, and Mario Praz to include him among those writers who created ‘in the shadow of the divine Marquis’. But in the midst of the horror as Dostoevsky lingers over the husband’s first blows, delivered ‘methodically, indifferently, even sleepily’, he ...”

“... was somewhat shaken by the criticisms of his friend Herbert Read and of the Italian polymath Mario Praz, then teaching at Liverpool, whose work in the same field Eliot greatly admired. In 1937 Eliot pronounced them ‘pretentious and immature’. Should one now agree with Schuchard that they contribute to our understanding, if not of Donne, then of ...”

“... mind’, arriving only at lectures that mattered as the ‘history of your own mind’ (as Mario Praz wrote to Eliot). In his commentary on the lectures, Crawford comes too close to Vivien’s later claim, ‘As to Tom’s mind, I am his mind,’ suggesting: ‘What he projects as large-scale analysis of the history of poetry can seem, at times, a ...”

“... of this particular episode, though Eliot’s subsequent exchanges with H.J.C. Grierson and Mario Praz show how anxious, and deferential, he could be when exposing his work to the critical eyes of the professionals in the field.† This volume is more revealing about an episode in which Eliot came even closer to academia, albeit in the rather ...”