Zofloya: or The Moor

scanned copy of archive materials.
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.