Norman Douglas wrote scientific monographs, memoirs, polemics, novels, a collection of obscene limericks, and even an aphrodisiac cookbook, but he is best known as a travel writer. He spent more than half his life in Italy, and it was chiefly as an interpreter of southern Italy that he achieved renown in England, where his work ranks with that of Charles Doughty, T. E. Lawrence, and D. H. Lawrence. Douglas virtually invented the modern travel book, as a portmanteau genre whose themes of leisure and unconstrained pleasure are reflected in a loose, digressive construction. In America his reputation rests on his novel South Wind (1917), which made expatriate life in Europe irresistible to a large audience of young readers impatient with life at home. In this regard Douglas may be credited with having helped give birth to the "lost generation."

George Norman Douglass was born on 8 December 1868 at Falkenhorst, the...