ELEONORA AND JOSEPH. Julieta Almeida Rodrigues
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020907642 ISBN 978-1-7348659-1-2 paperback (alk. paper)

THE SPRING is an imprint of New Academia Publishing
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Author’s contact:
https://www.julietaalmeidarodriguesauthor.com
To Anne Clark Christman,
Washingtonian and Friend,
and
to my son, Julian, as always
About This Book
As the novel opens, aristocratic Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel pleads with the High Court of Naples to be beheaded instead of hanged like a criminal. One of the leading revolutionaries of her time, Eleonora contributed to the establishment of the Neapolitan Republic, based on the ideals of the French Revolution. Imprisoned in 1799 after the return of the Bourbon Monarchy, and while waiting to be sentenced, she writes a memoir. Here, she discusses not only her revolutionary enthusiasm, but also the adolescent lover who abandoned her, Joseph Correia da Serra.
While visiting Monticello many years later, Joseph discovers Eleonora's manuscript in Thomas Jefferson's library. Now retired, Jefferson is committed to founding the University of Virginia and entices Correia with a position when the institution opens. As the two philosophes explore Eleonora's writing through the lens of their own lives, achievements, and follies, they share many intimate secrets.
Told from Eleonora and Joseph's alternating points of view, the interwoven first-person narratives follow the characters from the elegant salons of Naples to the halls of Monticello, from the streets of European capitals such as Lisbon, London, and Paris to the cultured new world of Philadelphia and the chic soirées in Washington.
Eleonora and Joseph were both prominent figures of the Southern European Enlightenment. Together with Thomas Jefferson, they formed part of The Republic of Letters, a formidable network of thinkers who radically influenced the intellectual world in which they lived and which we still inhabit today.
Contents
Praise for Eleonora and Joseph
Standing Before the High Court
Eleonora: The Jacobin Marquise
Prologue
Standing Before the High Court
Kingdom of Naples, Naples, August 17, 1799
This might well be the last entry of my memoir. I, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, am standing before the Giunta di Stato—the High Court of State—of King Ferdinando