1. 

   Villa Lante, Italy, Photo courtesy of Roberto Piperno

2. Read Introduction by John Dixon Hunt of ” Italian Villas and Their Gardens,” a book written by Edith Wharton originally published in 1904 by the Century Company, in 2008 by Rizzoli and The Mount Press.  Why did Henry James describe Edith Wharton’s villa and garden visits as “excursionism?”
3.  What is difference between garden writer and travel writer? Which was Edith?
4. Charles Platt wrote a book about Italian gardens about the same time that Wharton did.  How did their writings differ?
5. Did Edith approve of  Maxfield Parrish’s pictures he painted to portray the gardens she wrote about? Do she have literary control?

Beautiful book to read and that is just the start of it!