L. E. L.

"Corinne, or Italy (1807). A romantic novel by Mme de Staël. Oswald Nevil, and English lord, recuperating in Rome, meets the famous poetess Corinne, who, half-English and half-Italian, has exiled herself from her native England. They fall in love, and Nevil wishes to marry Corinne, but she hesitates, fearing the rigidity of the English life she once knew; her present unconventional life is too dear to her. Oswald, forced to return to England, later gives in to the pressures of his social ilieu and marries the wholly English Lucile, half sister of Corinne. When she learns of the marriage, Corinne dies of grief. idealistic and passionate, Corinne is a psychological study of two tormented souls and is a celebrated description of Italian civilization and mores." - - from Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition

L.E.L. - poet, novelist, playwright, reviewer - wrote busily and profitably, one of a generation of women writers active as the last phase of Romanticism ushered in the Victorian period. She wrote with enviable ease and professional polish, as the ballads and narrative poems in this volume amply demonstrate. In her thirties she made an unfortunate marriage, went to Africa with her husband, and mysteriously died there in the same year, whether by accident or suicide is not known. The improvisatrice was published in 1824 and went rapidly through several editions. This facsimile is based on the fifth of 1825.