page_title: Rambles in Germany and Italy
section_title: Risorgimento
hierarchical_section_title: Rambles in Germany and Italy / Background / Risorgimento
caption_attribution_description: English: A black and white engraved bust portrait of Giuseppe Mazzini based on a photograph by Domenico Lama
context_page_description: Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 is a travel narrative by the British Romantic author Mary Shelley. Issued in 1844, it is her last published work. Published in two volumes, the text describes two European trips that Mary Shelley took with her son, Percy Florence Shelley, and several of his university friends. Mary Shelley had lived in Italy with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, between 1818 and 1823. For her, Italy was associated with both joy and grief: she had written much while there but she had also lost her husband and two of her children. Thus, although she was anxious to return, the trip was tinged with sorrow. Shelley describes her journey as a pilgrimage, which will help cure her depression.
  At the end of the second trip, Mary Shelley spent time in Paris and associated herself with the "Young Italy" movement, Italian exiles who were in favour of Italian independence and unification. One revolutionary in particular attracted her: Ferdinando Gatteschi. To assist him financially, Shelley decided to publish Rambles. However, Gatteschi became discontented with Shelley's assistance and tried to blackmail her.
context_section_description: From the Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century, Italy was divided into many small duchies and city-states, some of which were autonomous and some of which were controlled by Austria, France, Spain, or the Papacy. These multifarious governments and the diversity of Italian dialects spoken on the peninsula caused residents to identify as "Romans" or "Venetians", for example, rather than as "Italians". When Napoleon conquered parts of Italy during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), he unified many of the smaller principalities; he centralised the governments and built roads and communication networks that helped to break down the barriers between and among Italians. Not all Italians welcomed French rule, however; Giuseppe Capobianco founded a secret society called the Carbonari to resist both French rule and the Roman Catholic Church. After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the Congress of Vienna left much of northern Italy in the hands of the Austrians, the Carbonari continued their resistance. The Carbonari led revolts in Naples and Piedmont in 1820 and 1821 and in Bologna, the Papal States, Parma, and Modena in the 1830s. After the failure of these revolts, Giuseppe Mazzini, a Carbonaro who was exiled from Italy, founded the "Young Italy" group to work toward the unification of Italy, to establish a democratic republic, and to force non-Italian states to relinquish authority on the peninsula. By 1833, 60,000 people had joined the movement. These nationalist revolutionaries, with foreign support, attempted, but failed, to overthrow the Austrians in Genoa and Turin in 1833 and Calabria in 1844. Italian unification, or Risorgimento, was finally achieved in 1870 under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
caption: Giuseppe Mazzini formed the "Young Italy" group, with which Mary Shelley associated in Paris.[2]
exif: {}