Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) expressed delight in crossing from France into Italy during the spring of 1818. Evidence of Shelley’s awakening Italian consciousness appears in early letters and journals composed during travels and residence with husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) in Rome, Leghorn, Milan, Pisa, Florence, Naples, Venice, Lucca, Livorno, and Lerici. The Italian air and spellbinding Rome created sensations so intense that she developed a ‘perpetual enchantment’ during imaginative ramblings with beautiful paintings, magnificent architecture, heavenly music, and sensing Englishness ebbing away. She wrote, ‘My past life before I saw [Rome] appears a blank, & now I begin to live’. Although Mary had adopted Italy as her country, after Shelley’s death, a forced return to England at the command of her father-in-law caused a considerable sense of grief and loss. Her plight increased her longing for the home of her heart and created a new identity as Anglo-Italicus. As Shelley became committed to Italian political affairs, she created a gendered travel gaze that rejected English androcentric patriarchal intrusions into daily life in favor of the freer air of her adopted homeland.