Leatherstocking On The Rialto

Bravo for John Lukacs’s splendid piece on Venice in the April issue! He might have added that the first American novel about Venice was written by, of all people, James Fenimore Cooper ( The Bravo , 1831). And of course William Dean Howells received his Venice consulship in 1861 as a reward for his campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.