George Dennis (explorer)

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George Dennis (b. 21 July 1814 in Ash Grove, Hackney, Middlesex; d. 15 November 1898 in South Kensington, London) was a British tourist and explorer of Etruria; his written account of the ancient ruins of the Etruscan civilization is among the first of the modern era. Dennis was also an official of the British Excise Office.

Dennis travelled through Etruria between 1842 and 1847, in the company of artist Samuel Ainsley in 1842 and 1843. The result of his travels was his 1,085 page treatise Cities and cemeteries of Etruria, published in 1848 by the British Museum and including sketches by Dennis and Ainsley. Ostensibly a travelogue for the well-heeled Victorian tourist, Dennis' volume is much more, capturing the author's own diligence and erudition, and describing and contextualizing Etruscan ruins and Tuscan landscapes in able prose with scholarly detail.

[edit] References

Article by D.E. Rhodes in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
D. E. Rhodes, Dennis of Etruria: the life of George Dennis (1973)
D. E. Rhodes, Dennis d'Etruria, trans. D. Mantovani (1992).
Timothy W. Potter "Dennis of Etruria: a celebration", Antiquity 72 (1998), 916–21.