Romola (Penguin Classics)

Set in late-fifteenth-century Italy, in the Renaissance Florence of Machiavelli and the Medicis, Romola (1862-3) is George Eliot's most exotic and adventurous novel. It reconstructs a turning-point in the intellectual history of Europe by charting 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'. Interwoven with these momentous public events is the personal story of Romola de'Bardi, the most inspirational of George Eliot's heroines, and Tito Melema, the most unscrupulous of her villains.