Dennis of Etruria: a celebration

Abstract

George Dennis’ The cities and cemeteries of Etruria, a massive two-volume work of over 1000 pages, was published towards the end of 1848, the British Museum’s copy (now the British Library’s) being received on 18 January 1849. It was quickly acclaimed as a literary and archaeological masterpiece (Rhodes 1973: 52–5; Pallottino 1955: 126, n. 1), which brought the then little-known Etruscans to life in the most vivid of ways. The fruit, in Dennis’ word, of extensive travelling in Etruria between 1842 and 1847, and of much work in the libraries of, in particular, Rome, it remains 150 years later an indispensable topographical source. Indeed, a 2nd, revised, edition appeared in 1878 (reprinted in 1883, but misleadingly entitled a 3rd edition), and a further version of the 1848 volume was published in J.M. Dent’s highly regarded ‘Everyman’ series in 1907.

A century of prehistory and landscape studies at the British School at Rome

“…The curious thing is that the English-speaking world (but not that of the Italians) in general has been astonishingly reluctant to accord Dennis due recognition of his achievements. In the later nineteenth century he was effectively 'marginalized' by the academic world (not least at the British Museum: Potter, 1998); in the twentieth century, outside those who have worked on the Etruscans, he is largely unknown. Concerning the lack of an entry for Dennis in the Dictionary of National Biography, Denys Haynes (then Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum) could, perhaps repentantly, but also delightfully, write in his preface to a fine autobiography (Rhodes, 1973): 'Can it really be, one wonders irreverently, that James Blatch Piggot Dennis's paper 'On the mode of Flight of the Sterodactyles of the Coprolite bed near Cambridge' is more deserving of national commemoration than Cities and CemeteriesT Here, we must certainly accord Dennis considerable prominence in shaping the evolution of landscape studies.…”