Romola - Hardcover

Eliot, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160762012X ISBN 13: 9781607620129

Publisher: Norilana Books, 2008

Synopsis

ROMOLA (1862-63) by British Victorian woman author George Eliot is a complex historical novel of Renaissance Florence. Young, handsome, and ambitious scholar Tito Melema falls in love with the erudite and intelligent Romola, daughter of another scholar and convinces her to marry him. In a mock ceremony Tito also marries a naive young Florentine girl Tessa. Political and religious upheaval fills the city, plague spreads, and events reveal Tito to be a dishonorable and cowardly schemer who betrays the trust of his adoptive father. Otherworldly and charitable Romola is thrust in the middle of this personal and political conflict, and her fate becomes entwined with historical events, and with Tessa, the "other wife."A sophisticated and many-layered psychological masterpiece by the author of MIDDLEMARCH.

About this title

Review:

"George Eliot's humanity colors all her other gifts--her humor, her morality, and her exquisite rhetoric." --Henry James

From the Back Cover:

The most exotic of George Eliot's works, Romola recounts the story of the famous religious leader Savonarola in Florence at the time of Machiavelli and the Medicis. Of all her novels, this was the author's favourite.

No other Eliot novel was illustrated in its first edition. Romola, however, was sought by George Smith for serialization in the prestigious illustrated Cornhill Magazine. Smith commissioned illustrations for the novel from the rising young artist Frederick Leighton, who had studied in Florence in the 1840s and had frequently painted Florentine Renaissance subjects. Romola was serialised with the Leighton illustrations in the magazine from July 1862 to August 1863. It was first published in book form in 1863; the first edition was published by Smith, Elder in three volumes, and a one-volume edition in two-column format with all but one of the Leighton illustrations was published later that year by Harper & Brothers in the United States. This facsimile reprint is of the one-volume 1863 Harper & Brothers edition, and includes 8 pages of original advertisements from the back of the book.

This is one of a series from Broadview Press of facsimile reprint editions--editions that provide readers with a direct sense of these works as the Victorians themselves experienced them.

About this edition

• Publisher: Norilana Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 160762012X
• ISBN 13: 9781607620129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 700