Gladstone and Dante

When criticising Lord John Russell's translations from Dante in 1844, William Gladstone was seeking not only to establish his own credentials as a Dante scholar and make useful political capital, but also to signal his belief that insufficient time and thought had been devoted to the project. ‘Unless his intellectual being be in great part absorbed in that of his original’, Gladstone opined, the translator ‘must ... fail in his task, whatever be his native powers’. In researching and writing this book, Anne Isba set herself the challenge of explicating one of Gladstone's most significant intellectual and spiritual influences, the life and writings of Dante Alighieri. Where she focuses on this question and privileges its Victorian context, she succeeds in her endeavour, offering numerous useful insights into Gladstone's rhythms of reading, his attitudes to both British and Italian political life, and his emotional and spiritual attachment to Italy. Yet, it

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