Throughout his life Lawrence was fascinated by Italy, its landscape and its people. The eight short essays in this volume written between 1919 and 1927 grew out of this fascination. His vivid descriptions of the tombs and their decorations, his imaginative interpretation of the artefacts, and his intimate sketches of the countryside and its people, build a picture of the Etruscan life-style, beliefs and civilization which Lawrence saw as the symbol of a lost vitality. Lawrence's travel books contain a great deal of personal narrative and reveal his passionate involvement with the physical world of nature of which he wrote with immediacy and vividness.