Novel

The Gadfly

by E. L. Voynich

Arthur Burton, a young Englishman in Italy in the 1830s, is betrayed by the priest he confides in, fakes his own death and comes back years later as the Gadfly, a scarred revolutionary with a savage pen. Ethel Voynich published it in 1897; it did respectably in English and sold millions of copies in the Soviet Union and China. She was the wife of the bookseller who gave the manuscript on the lectern its name, and she outlived him by thirty years.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 6 hr 45 min

Where to find it

The Restricted Catalogue

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #3431. In the public domain in the United States.