Hester Lynch Piozzi (nee Salisbury) (1741–1821) began her literary career in the shadow of Samuel Johnson and forfeited her place in Johnson’s circle by marrying an Italian musician. Leaving London for Italy, she wrote Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany (1789), reflecting her appreciation for the details of Italian daily life. Her emphasis on ‘family management’ and her core assumption that women form an essential base for her readership set Piozzi’s work apart from the tropes of the masculine-dominated literature of the Grand Tour. Additionally, Piozzi re-genders the Grand Tour narrative by matching masculine itineraries with feminised details about daily life, Renaissance art, and natural landscapes. She also systematically attends to the lives and social arrangements of continental women. Piozzi assumed that her observations would differ from those of men who had travelled to the same locations and that her female reading audience would appreciate such a perspective. The erudition that flavors Piozzi’s observations reveals a mind at once steeped in antiquity and drawn by a genuine interest in the daily life of her Italian sisters.