Romola (Oxford World's Classics)

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 humanist spirit 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 historical figures in the novel, identify quotations and often difficult allusions, and give translations of all Italian words and phrases.