Romola

by Eliot, George; Barrett, Dorothea

• ISBN13: 9780140434705
• ISBN10: 0140434704
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-01-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Set in late fifteenth-century Italy, in the Renaissance Florence of Machiavelli and the Medicis, Romola (1862-3) is the most exotic and adventurous of George Eliot's novels. It charts the career and martyrdom of the charismatic religious leader Savonarola, who rebelled against the humanistspirit of the age and burned books on a "bonfire of vanities." With this story, Eliot brilliantly reconstructs in vivid detail a turning-point in the intellectual history of Europe. Eliot's own favorite among her novels, this edition's notes supply biographical information on the numerous historicalfigures in the novel, identify quotations and often difficult allusions, and give translations of all Italian words and phrases.

Author Biography

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans Cross) was born on November 22, 1819 at Arbury Farm, Warwickshire, England. She received an ordinary education and, upon leaving school at the age of sixteen, embarked on a program of independent study to further her intellectual growth. In 1841 she moved with her father to Coventry, where the influences of “skeptics and rationalists” swayed her from an intense religious devoutness to an eventual break with the church. The death of her father in 1849 left her with a small legacy and the freedom to pursue her literary inclinations. In 1851 she became the assistant editor of the Westminster Review, a position she held for three years. In 1854 came the fated meeting with George Henry Lewes, the gifted editor of The Leader, who was to become her adviser and companion for the next twenty-four years. Her first book, Scenes of a Clerical Life (1858), was followed by Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1872). The death of Lewes, in 1878, left her stricken and lonely. On May 6, 1880, she married John Cross, a friend of long standing, and after a brief illness she died on December 22 of that year, in London.

Table of Contents

Oxford World's Classics	p. i
Oxford World's Classics	p. ii
Introduction	p. vii
Note On The Text	p. xxiii
Select Bibliography	p. xxv
A Chronology Of George Eliot	p. xxvi
[july 1862] Proem	p. 3
The Shipwrecked Stranger	p. 11
	p. 11
A Breakfast for Love	p. 24
The Barber's Shop	p. 28
First Impressions	p. 39
The Blind Scholar and His Daughter	p. 43
Dawning Hopes	p. 57
A Learned Squabble	p. 72
A Face in the Crowd	p. 78
A Man's Ransom	p. 90
Under the Plane-Tree	p. 98
Tito's Dilemma	p. 110
The Prize is Nearly Grasped	p. 113
The Shadow of Nemesis	p. 125
The Peasants' Fair	p. 132
The Dying Message	p. 147
A Florentine Joke	p. 155
Under the Loggia	p. 168
The Portrait	p. 175
The Old Man's Hope	p. 181
The Day of the Betrothal	p. 185
Florence Expects a Guest	p. 195
	p. 195
The Prisoners	p. 202
After-Thoughts	p. 210
Inside the Duomo	p. 213
Outside the Duomo	p. 219
The Garment of Fear	p. 224
The Young Wife	p. 230
The Painted Record	p. 240
A Moment of Triumph	p. 245
The Avenger's Secret	p. 252
Fruit is Seed	p. 261
A Revelation	p. 266
Baldassarre Makes an Acquaintance	p. 277
No Place for Repentance	p. 285
What Florence Was Thinking of	p. 296
Ariadne Discrowns Herself	p. 300
The Tabernacle Unlocked	p. 310
[february 1863] Chapter XXXVIII the Black Marks Become Magical	p. 315
A Supper in the Rucellai Gardens	p. 321
An Arresting Voice	p. 337
Coming Back	p. 346
Romola in Her Place	p. 349
Book III	p. 349
The Unseen Madonna	p. 356
The Visible Madonna	p. 362
At the Barber's Shop	p. 368
By a Street Lamp	p. 376
[april 1863] Chapter Xlvii Check	p. 385
Counter Check	p. 388
The Pyramid of Vanities	p. 394
Tessa Abroad and at Home	p. 400
Monna Brigida's Conversion	p. 410
[may 1863] Chapter Lii a Prophetess	p. 415
On San Miniato	p. 421
The Evening and the Morning	p. 426
Waiting	p. 430
The Other Wife	p. 433
[june 1863] Chapter Lvii Why Tito Was Safe	p. 445
A Final Understanding	p. 451
Pleading	p. 456
The Scaffold	p. 465
Drifting Away	p. 471
[july 1863] Chapter Lxii the Benediction	p. 476
Ripening Schemes	p. 480
The Prophet in His Cell	p. 491
The Trial by Fire	p. 500
A Masque of the Furies	p. 507
Waiting by the River	p. 511
Romola's Waking	p. 518
Homeward	p. 527
Meeting Again	p. 530
The Confession	p. 535
The Last Silence	p. 541
Epilogue	p. 545
Explanatory Notes	p. 549
Glossary Of Italian Words	p. 620
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