Abstract
This essay analyzes a novel entitled Doctor Antonio, published in 1855 in Edinburgh by an Italian exile, Giovanni Ruffini. During their ‘forced’ stay in an isolated village in the western part of the Italian Riviera, the aristocrat Sir John and his daughter Lucy discover a part of Italy that Northern European travelers had neglected until then. The romantic love story between Lucy and the Italian patriot Doctor Antonio contributed to make the region of Liguria a popular destination among British tourists, who eventually transformed the small village of Bordighera, where the novel is set, into a ‘British paradise,’ as Italian novelist and journalist Edmondo De Amicis defined it in an essay published at the beginning of the 20th century (De Amicis, 1906).
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