At the time

was published in mid-1917, Norman Douglas was wandering in central Italy. He had published three highly regarded travel works –

(1911),

(1912), and

(1915) – and until 1916 had worked as an editor with the

Late that year, however, Douglas had been arrested for indecent behaviour with several boys in London, and after spending some time in jail, decided in early 1917 that an extended “trip to the sunny Mediterranean” was in order. He made his final corrections to the novel's proofs in Florence.

Appropriately enough, South Wind itself is a literary trip to that “sunny Mediterranean”, a compendium of much that Douglas had learned about the region in years of travel and sojourn. The novel is set on

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Citation: Koger, Grove. "South Wind". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1922, accessed 22 November 2024.]