The Nun Of Arrouca : a tale.

Sm.8vo, pp [2], 87, bound in contemporary polished calf, spine gilt with raised bands and red label, joints cracked but holding, internally sound, FIRST EDITION; an annonymously published novella that was rigorously suppressed by its radical politican author, an indiscretion of his youth when ' he had several times visited Portugal, met Wellington; and travelled to Elba to meet Napoleon. It as been called 'a late-Gothic romantic novella about a serving officer in the Peninsular War being nursed back to health by a nun after being wounded. They, of course, fall in love, and it is easy to say why Russell should want to suppres it. Summers, in his Gothic Bibliography, suggests he was 'buying up every copy at whatsoever price and destroying it'. Still, though rare, a reasonable number of copies have survived thanks to his efforts to get ride of them; this one presented by a father to his daughter in 1838 - co-incidentally when Russell's radical star as a politician was in the ascendant.