Zofloya - or The Moor

This is the first edition for nearly 200 years of an unduly neglected work, originally published in 1806, by an intriguing and 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, it contradicts idealized stereotypes in women''s writing and challenges the received idea of the Gothic genre''s representation of passive, victimized women.