Rossini's success in Italy in the early 1820s was certainly not echoed in France, where he was regarded as "an ill-bred parvenu, whose cheap popularity was an insult to a great musical tradition". Stendhal was the first of his contemporaries to recognize the genius of this important Italian composer. Besides being a fascinating and penetrating account of the Italian composer's most creative years, and of contemporary musical events and opinions, this work is one of the finest items in the Stendhalian literary canon. Details of Rossini's early life are followed by penetrating discussions of the operas, libretti, personalities of the period and Rossini's own character.

The 'Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio'- Stendhal's first published work - owes its inspiration to the audacious pragmatism of its author. After the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, Henri Beyle was jobless, soon destined to become a refugee and in desperate need of money. His most abiding passion in life was music, so why not write about it? Unfortunately, however, he knew next to nothing about it. So, calmly and without the slightest pang of conscience, he resolved to plunder the works of other writers - in particular those of the musicologist Giuseppe Carpani, who was annoyed and said so vociferously. The result of Stendhal's unscrupulous plagiarism is one of the most fascinating literary enigmas of all time. How is it that what started as a blatant act of piracy evolved into a work of enduring genius? Despite its unpropitious beginnings, this work represents the wrong-headedness of a genius - and the singular Louis-Alexandre-Cesar Bomet who signed the 'Lives' was already, in everything that mattered, the man who was to be Stendhal, one of the most enduring literary figures of the nineteenth century.

The articles which Stendhal contributed as French correspondent for the 'London Magazine', 'New Monthly Magazine' and other English Marketing Reviews of the 1820s are here brought together in a single volume, the only edition available in English. In them Stendhal - defying fashion and giving proof of the bold originality of his creative writing - provides an illuminating and often entertaining commentary on the politics and mores of post-Napoleonic France and Italy, and reveals his outstanding and all too rarely acknowledged gifts as a reviewer and literary critic. Together with the articles from the English Marketing Reviews, this edition includes translations of articles, essays and notes on Cornielle, Scott and Lord Byron, who was on terms of close acquaintance with Stendhal during his stay in Milan in 1816.

Few writers have known Italy better than Stendhal: he was only seventeen when he first rode south across the Alps in the wake of Napoleon's armies, and he continued to travel and to live in Italy until a few months before his death. Some of his visits lasted only a few weeks, others continued for years, and he spent the last decade of his life as French Consul in Civitavecchia - yet he was never a tourist in the ordinary sense of the word. Italy, for Stendhal, was never a mere treasure trove of ruins, museums and galleries: it was the life of the country which fascinated him, its spirit, the inner workings of its heart and mind. This picture - or rather this living dream - of Italy he created is as fresh and tantalizing today as it was almost two centuries ago.