The Second English Period

In 1821 Foscolo started to frequent his daughter Floriana, who was born in 1805 from his relationship with Sophia Saint John Hamilton during a two-year spell in France; the young woman, whose existence the father was probably previously unaware of, had been brought up by her maternal grandmother, who died in February 1821. In 1822 Foscolo went to live with his daughter at Digamma Cottage, a home that was luxuriously furnished (apparently thanks in part to the inheritance the grandmother had left the granddaughter) in an area of land in Regent’s Park. Many of the Italian exiles who started to come to England after the revolts of 1821 were hosted, sometimes for payment, at two buildings annexed to the main residence called Cappa Cottage and Green Cottage; among them were Luigi Porro, Santorre di Santarosa, Giuseppe Pecchio, Filippo Ugoni, Giovita Scalvini and Giovanni Arrivabene. Foscolo also made contact with other Italians who had come to London, including Giovanni Berchet, Gabriele Rossetti and Antonio Panizzi. Even though they shared the same destiny, distant from the homeland, the other Risorgimento movement exiles did not identify with the figure of Foscolo because of the different experiences and the poet's stances, and they showed a certain degree of suspicion towards him.

In the meantime, Foscolo stepped up his work as a journalist and essayist, in part to cope with increasing costs; Essays on Petrarch came out in a limited edition in 1821 and against in 1823; the following year an extract of  Le Grazie came out together with Dissertation on an Ancient Hymn; various articles on literature, art and poetry were published at an impressive rate. A series of conferences in Italian with an admission charge were organized in May-June 1823, the considerable earnings of which were not enough to cover the many debts the writer had run up.