Romola

Published in 1862-63, this historical novel is set in Florence in the 1490s, during Savonarola's preaching and the French invasion. Romola de' Bardi, learned daughter of a blind classical scholar, marries Tito Melema, a charming Greek refugee who advances in Florentine politics by charm and betrayal. As Tito sells her father's library, courts another woman, and shifts sides, Romola is pulled into the city's religious and civic crisis. Scholarship, street faction, and the monk's reform movement press on private loyalty at once. The book is a novel of conscience in a republic, not a romance of the Medici court.

Bound in purple cloth blocked with a gilt design. Dark green slipcase.