8vo. In three volumes. [4], 383, [1]; [4], 421, [1]; [4], 442pp, [2]. With half-titles. Uncut in original publisher's powder blue wrappers, printed paper lettering-pieces. Housed in recent custom cloth case. A trifle marked, chipping/tearing to spines, cloth case sunned. Armorial bookplates of Maxwells of Kirkconnall, New Abbey, to versos of upper wrappers, very occasional light spotting.

The first London edition (appearing in the year after the initial Parisian printing) of Swiss-born French woman of letters and salonnière Anne Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein's (1766-1817) triple-decker novel, an an homage to the landscape, literature and art of Italy, interwoven with discreet French Revolutionary political allusion and allegory. The work is notable for being the first non-German aesthetic romance.