The Italian (Oxford World s Classics)

£1.22

Wicked abbesses and scheming monks - Once again, Radcliffe has succeeded in making the setting, Naples with Vesuvius lowering in the background, the Alps and the islands of Ischia and Capri the real heroes/heroines of her novel. The descriptions are magnificent,quite surprisingly, as Radcliffe had only ever glimpsed the area from a distance, having been turned back at the border.There are not so many ghoulies and ghosties in this book as there are , for instance, in The Italian . The menace , here, is of a more earthly kind provided by Schedoni, the corrupt monk and the scheming Marchesa di Vivaldi.The plot centres on Ellena and Vivaldi s love affair and the attempts by others to keep them apart. Needles to say, they are united in the end but have to survive kidnapping by various unsavoury characters, inclucing the officers of the Inquisition. There are many characteristic gloomy castles ,dank churches and crumbling ruins.There were those, when novel was first published, who considered it unsuitable for women to read. One critic dismissed it as a book that would only be read by young women who wanted to frighten themselves to death .It does not have the same impact in our more cynical age but is still capable of making the reader a little bit tense. Romantics among us will enjoy the final reunion of the lovers.

• The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Wordsworth Classics) (Wordsworth Classics)
• The Mysteries of Udolpho: A Romance (Penguin Classics)
• Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies)
• The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (Oxford World s Classics)
• The Monk (Oxford World s Classics)