is the third of Norman Douglas’s travel books, published in 1915 while Douglas was an editor with the

and draws upon a long acquaintance with southernmost Italy. Douglas had first visited the area in August of 1907, and on a subsequent visit had carried money for the relief of the victims of a devastating earthquake in late 1908 – the most recent of many to have struck the area. Douglas travelled by train where possible, and by cart and on foot where necessary. An enthusiastic walker and climber, he thought nothing of covering miles of mule-tracks between villages. “It is an easy march of eight hours or less”, he writes of one excursion.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, southern Italy was anything but a tourist destination. Poor, backward

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Citation: Koger, Grove. "Old Calabria". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 May 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3171, accessed 25 November 2024.]