Agnes of Sorrento

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Agnes of Sorrento is a romantic historical tale born from her own Italian journey through Florence, Naples, Sorrento, Salerno, Pæstum, and Pompeii in 1859–1860. Shaped by impressions of Savonarola, Catholic ritual, and the luminous southern landscape, the novel carries a dreamlike, devotional spirit and feels like a "child of love," first shared among friends and shadowed by memory and loss. In old Sorrento, at sunset, Agnes appears as a gentle, inwardly serious girl selling oranges beside her fierce, practical grandmother, Dame Elsie. Their quiet life is disturbed by a handsome, flirtatious nobleman whose gift of money, a kiss, and a ring for Saint Agnes awakens innocence, temptation, and social tension. Stowe renders Sorrento as an enchanted world of cliffs, gardens, bells, shrines, and sea light, mirroring Agnes's pure heart and religious imagination. Agnes turns admiration into prayer, tending flowers before the Madonna and Child, while the surrounding beauty deepens the novel's blend of piety and foreboding. As dusk falls, a haunting tenor voice from the gorge stirs fear and spiritual confusion, and Father Francesco's own anguish over forbidden love reveals the story's larger struggle between earthly passion and divine consolation. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.