The Castle of Fratta

Published in 1867, this novel is the memoir of Carlo Altoviti, who grows up in the decaying Friulian household of the Castle of Fratta in the years of Venetian decline and Napoleonic war. Family lawsuits, the count's household, first love, and later military service and travel carry him from provincial childhood into the making of Italy. The narrative runs from the 1770s toward the mid-nineteenth century. The book is a historical Bildungsroman of one life, not a gothic tale about a haunted castle.

Bound in quarter grey canvas, marbled paper boards. White dust-jacket printed in grey and dark brown.