'Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross', by Ben Downing

by Ben Downing

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Janet Ross was a major factor in drawing people's attention to the Tuscan countryside rather than concentrating on Florence. She spent 60 years, until her death in 1927, living near Florence, but probably her greatest influence was through her books on rural life and on Tuscan cooking - even though she owned up to "never having even boiled an egg".

Instead, she observed her Italian cooks, questioned them and put it all down on paper. In other ways, she shared in the work on her property, toiling in her Wellington boots alongside her share farmers, producing wheat, olive oil and wine. The peasants respected and loved this unconventional Englishwoman.

In writing her biography, Ben Downing, an American essayist and poet, also tells the story of the Anglo-American residents in the Florence area in the late 19th and early 20th century when the English alone in Florence constituted a seventh of the inhabitants. Downing furnishes pointed anecdotes about figures such as Bernard Berenson, Harold Acton and Vernon Lee.