Romola, George Eliot
Romola, George Eliot
List: $54.00 | Sale: $37.79
Club: $27.00

Romola

Author: George Eliot

Narrator: Lucy Scott

Abridged: 22 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/27/2020

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Synopsis

Set in the turbulent years following the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, George Eliot's fourth novel, Romola, moves the stage from the English countryside of the 19th century to an Italy four centuries before her time. It tells the tale of a young Florentine woman, Romola de' Bardi, and her coming of age through her troubled marriage to the suave and self-absorbed Greek, Tito. Slowly Tito's true character begins to unfurl and his lies and treachery push Romola towards a more spiritual path, where she transcends into a majestic, Madonna-like role, while Tito descends further into corruption and villainy... Impeccably researched, the novel features a cast of historical characters including Girolamo Savonarola, Piero di Cosimo and Niccolo` Machiavelli, and draws parallels between the Republic of Rome of Eliot's day and the Republic of Florence ruled by Savonarola, most famous for its Bonfire of the Vanities, depicted here in vivid detail.

About George Eliot

George Eliot is the masculine pen name of Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), one of Victorian England's leading novelists. Her first stories appeared in Blackwood's magazine, followed by such novels as The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Middlemarch. Her work was popular with critics and the public alike, and in later years her novels were especially valued for their detailed portrayals of rural English life.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on May 13, 2018

I'm not sure what moved Henry James to pronounce this George Eliot's best work. It isn't. It's like saying The Beautiful and the Damned was Scott Fitzgerald's best work or Between the Acts was Virginia Woolf's. Sometimes literary criticism can acquire the forensic objectivity of science. There's no......more

Goodreads review by TheBookWarren on June 07, 2024

4.50 ⭐️ (rnd ⬆️) — In the pantheon of English literature, George Eliot stands as a colossus, and "Romola" is a testament to her unparalleled mastery of narrative and character development. Eliot’s considered prose is free-flowing, descriptive & somehow always managed to catch the environmental textu......more

Goodreads review by Anabelle on February 15, 2011

I wrote my Master's thesis on this book, so I am aware of the long history of bad reviews for this quite revolutionary novel for George Eliot. The language is definitely difficult (contemporary reviewers complained of not being able to read it without a dictionary), but the rewards are definitely wo......more

Goodreads review by Arthur on July 27, 2010

If you’re looking to read your first George Eliot, don’t start with Romola. In 1866, Henry James called it Eliot’s greatest novel to date (and that means greater than The Mill on the Floss, which opinion is goofy). “It is decidedly the most important,” he wrote of the novel, “--not the most entertai......more

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