George Dennis (explorer)
George Dennis was a British explorer of Etruria; his written account and drawings of the ancient places and monuments of the Etruscan civilization combined with his summary of the ancient sources is among the first of the modern era and remains an indispensable reference in Etruscan studies.
Early life
George Dennis left school at the age of 15. He never went to college, yet he took an interest in languages, studying ancient Greek and Latin on his own and eventually becoming a polyglot in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, modern Greek, Turkish, and some Arabic. A strongly physical man as well, he often went for 40-mile hikes in the uplands of Scotland and Wales. He resolved to become an explorer; however, he worked mainly alone.Solitary Explorer
At age 22, Dennis conducted his first explorations in Portugal and Spain, writing his first work, A Summer in Andalucia, in 1839. Dennis roughed it in Etruria between 1842, at age 28, and 1847, in the company of artist Samuel Ainsley in three separate trips from 1842 to 1844. Etruria of the times had reverted to a semi-wilderness state, rural, depopulated, malarial, and infested with bandits. There were few roads. Dennis hiked across the country, living in the outdoors or in rural quarters infested with insects, studying and recording the monuments he found and any traditions associated with them.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. Dennis captures Etruscan civilization and Tuscan landscapes in able prose with scholarly detail. It was nevertheless generally unknown and unappreciated by the British public, partly because of Dennis's lack of academic credentials. He did make some fast friends among the academics who read his work, such as Austen Henry Layard.