Two English Women Periodicals Editors in Italy: Theodosia Garrow Trollope and Helen Zimmern as literary and cultural Go-betweens

The large British expatriate community that settled in Florence in the second half of the 19th century engaged in many intellectual endeavours to promote Italian culture. This paper looks at two English-language periodicals, 'The Tuscan Athenaeum', edited by Theodosia Garrow Trollope in1848-1849 and 'The Florence Gazette', edited by Helen Zimmern from 1890 to 1915. It analyses the extensive transnational networks the two editors belonged to and the way these periodicals contributed to the development of a cosmopolitan 'imagined community'.