sardinia-and-the-sardes-edwardes

sardinia-and-the-sardes-edwardes

Author: Charles Edwardes

Year: 1889

A straightforward account of Edwardes’s down-to-earth travels in Sardinia (including the interior), focussing on the people, the land, the economy, and the manner of living. (An Italian translation was published in 2000 by Sardinian publisher Ilisso.) Edwardes, who wrote other travel books and translated Leopardi’s essays and dialogues, was an able, patient, and resourceful traveler. He spoke Italian, and learned some Sard in the course of his visit (with which his Latin undoubtedly helped, Sard being recognizably closer to Latin than is Italian). Edwardes visited and observed cities around the coast. However, the interior was a very different country, and its people a very different people, and these were what Edwardes sought especially to learn about. The most extensive and interesting part of the book recounts his journey through the interior on horseback, with a guide who spoke only Sard, staying at such homes and inns as offered hospitality. See below for reservations as to the historical information Edwardes supplied from documentary research. The concluding chapter is a graphic and technically detailed account of the preparation and execution of a tuna mattanza, a well-known