The Italian

Anne Radcliffe, one of the founders of Gothic literature, wrote this novel in 1796, two years after her most famous work, The Mystery of Udolpho Castle.

The Italian Woman combines 18th-century romanticism with a foreboding sense of the macabre literature of the future, and seems to stand somewhere between the works of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.

This is a story of love under threat, a story of revenge and persecution, of mysterious monastic orders and the Holy Inquisition. The Italian landscape plays a special role in the novel, from mountain monasteries and secluded castles to Roman and Neapolitan squares. This is a book for all lovers of refined classics and Gothic literature.