Corinne or Italy (Oxford World's Classics)

Madame de Stael may have been one of the greatest 'political women' in history, but her main effort as a novelist - rapturously received at the time - has not worn at all well. It struggles under the guise of a conventional, leaden tourist guide to the antiquities of Rome and other parts of Italy, for armchair Grand Tourists, while aspiring to portray her fraught love affair with Benjamin Constant, depicted as the appallingly nervy and culturally over-sensitive Scottish Lord Nelvil (why Scottish ? - and such an unlikely name).