The Italian | Anne Radcliffe

Written in 1796, 'The Italian', with its archetypal villain Schedoni, intense romance between Vincentio di Vivaldi and Elena di Rosalba, and immaculate poetics of the sublime is the masterpiece of gothic fiction. Enlisted by Vincentio's mother, Marchesa, the scheming monk Schedoni casts a malevolent presence throughout the book in his plot to corrupt the romance of the young lovers. On the backdrop of the Inquisition and the French Revolution, it is a tale of the heroic struggle of love in the face of vindictive Machiavellian deceit told through the intensel descriptive landscapes of the Bay of Naples.