Charles Edwardes

If Joseph Fuos can rightly be considered the initiator of travel literature on Sardinia, Edwardes can be said to be the last of the long series of writers who delivered, through pages that are now unreal, now scrupulous, but almost always passionate, the image of the island to Europe. There is little news about his life. Born in Wolverhampton in Staffordshire, he is the author of children's books, but also and above all a writer and translator of philosophical works, and he will gain fame thanks to the translation of the “Essays and Dialogues” by Giacomo Leopardi, who will be so well known in England.
He made his trip to the island in 1888, from which he obtained “Sardinia and the Sardes”, published in London the following year. He is a learned traveler, and he comes there after having carefully read the works of the main Sardinian intellectuals, Manno and Spano, La Marmora and Azuni, but also the works of the British who preceded him, such as that of Tyndale, who in the preface he considers now outdated and in need of updates.
The work is divided into nineteen chapters for a total of about 400 pages, and describes in detail the travel experience, starting with the boarding in Civitavecchia and the journey to Cagliari, fully captured in its charm as a port city full of attractions and movement, but also as the historical capital of the island, where the prestigious remains of the cultures and civilizations that have passed through it coexist. The passion for the past also emerges from a long and detailed section in which English offers a synthesis of Sardinian history. From the “silent oracles of the nuraghi” to the abolition of feudalism and the Savoy administration, everything is told with the capacity for synthesis and elegance, even if the shadow of the infamous “Tree Papers” extends - this is certainly not the only case among nineteenth-century travelers - on some reconstructions. His is an engaging journey, sometimes hard and difficult, especially in inland areas, far from the island's convenient main road. This will be the case until the “farewell to Porto Torres” in the last chapter, in which the tuna slaughter is narrated with participation, a fascinating but ferocious spectacle, which after a first initial attraction leaves the traveler with a deep sense of nausea and sadness. Then, boarding a steamboat used to transport cattle, together with horses “wild as zebras”, Edwardes takes off again: on a smooth sea he heads for the French coast.

Update

25/6/2026 - 13:24