OltreOceano - Transatlantic Transitions is a book series that looks at the American presence in Italy in the 19th century. The various volumes focus on documenting and exploring the lives of American artists and authors during their sojourns in Italy as well as studying the effects and influence Italy had on their lives and their creative work.
The first volume of the series is on American writers in Florence. The subsequent works will examine the concept of the American 19th-century Grand Tour concentrating on the tour in Italy; the presence of American artists, mainly painters, in Italy as they were studying, working, and interacting with Italian artists; and the Italian sojourns of American female authors.

The essays in Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art examine the influence of Italy in the works of nineteenth-century American sculptors and painters. The focus is on their experience in Italy, their relationship with local workmen, their contact with Italian artists such as the Tuscan Macchiaioli, and the impact of their Italian experience on the formation of American art. The papers in the volume discuss such artists as Horatio Greenough, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, Henry Kirke Brown, Elihu Vedder, Edmonia Lewis, and John Singer Sargent. The essays are written by scholars from American universities and museums, and they appear in the following order: Elise Madeleine Ciregna, “’An Example in the Right Direction’: Horatio Greenough’s Life and Work in Italy”; John F. McGuigan Jr, “’A Painter’s Paradise’: Thomas Cole and His Transformative Experience in Florence, 1831-1832”; Rebecca Reynolds, “’No Ordinary Hands’: Hiram Powers’ Artistic and Professionally Related Family”; Karen Lemmey, “’I would just as soon be in Albany as Florence,’ Henry Kirke Brown and the American Expatriate Colonies in Italy, 1842-1846”; Mary K. McGuigan, “A Garden of Lost Opportunities: Elihu Vedder in Florence, 1857-1860”, Marilyn Richardson, “Friends and Colleagues: Edmonia Lewis and Her Italian Circle”; and Kathleen Lawrence, “John Singer Sargent, Italy, and the American Paradox.”

Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson. She is the author of Set in Stone: 19th-century American Authors in Florence (2003) and Florence, Italy: Images of the City in Nineteenth-Century American Writing (2007). She has been teaching English and American literature at American University programs in Rome and Florence. Her Ph.D. in English studies is from the University of Joensuu (Finland).

American Authors Reinventing Italy: The Writings of Exceptional Nineteenth-Century Women is a collection of scholarly papers that examine Italy in the writings of such American women as Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Edith Wharton. The introduction provides a general picture of the British and American female authors in Italy, in particular Florence, and discusses the works of such writers as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ouida, Violet Paget, Kate Field, and Francesca Alexander. In the essay that forms Chapter One, Debra Bernardi (Carroll College, Montana) examines sexuality in Margaret Fuller´s Italian writings; in Chapter Two, Philip J. Kowalski (Wake Forest University, North-Carolina) analyzes Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Italian views in her travel texts and her novel set in Italy; Sirpa Salenius (University of New Haven in Florence, Italy), in Chapter Three, looks at the way Constance Fenimore Woolson uses Italian tropes in her discussion of contemporary issues; and in Chapter Four, Virginia Ricard (University of Bordeaux, France) discusses themes, settings, and characters in Edith Wharton’s fiction and non-fiction writing that deals with Italy.

Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson. She is the author of Set in Stone: 19th-century American Authors in Florence (2003) and Florence, Italy: Images of the City in Nineteenth-Century American Writing (2007). She has been teaching English and American literature at American University programs in Rome and Florence. Her Ph.D. in English studies is from the University of Joensuu (Finland).

Set in Stone: 19th-century American Authors in Florence is a study (112 pages) of American authors whose Florentine sojourns have been honored with commemorative plaques in the city as well as its immediate surroundings. The writers included in the volume are Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. They all resided temporarily in Florence in the 19th century and most of them found the relaxed, dolce-far-niente, atmosphere of the city ideal for creative work. The city and its long history inspired the authors, stirring their imaginations. In the volume are gathered written testimonies of the impressions Florence awoke in these acclaimed visitors. Quotations have been taken from their writings, be they diaries, letters, autobiographies, novels or poems, in testimony of the importance of the Florentine sojourn in their lives and careers. Photographs and old postcards accompany the selected excerpts in order to offer the reader the possibility of comparison between the literary texts produced by the authors and the physical reality that served them as a source of inspiration.

The author, Sirpa Salenius, came from the United States to Florence, Italy approximately ten years ago and since then has been continuously traveling between the two continents. She has written several articles on American authors in Florence and her essays often concentrate on one specific author at a time. Ms. Salenius has been working for several years with American Universities´ Academic Programs in Florence as a guest lecturer as well as a professor of American literature.