This is the first edition in nearly 200 years of an unduly neglected work, originally published in 1806, by an unconventional woman writer. A Gothic tale of lust, betrayal and multiple murder set in fifteenth-century Venice, the novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of the central character, Victoria's, intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley,...