Rasselas

A prince kept all his life in a valley where every wish is granted escapes to find out what makes people happy, and reaches no conclusion at all. Johnson wrote it in the evenings of one week to pay for his mother's funeral, and never revised it. It is the most cheerful book ever written about the impossibility of contentment. Fifty-eight plates of classical ruins, capriccios, and Roman history by painters including Panini and Pietro da Cortona give the prince's search for happiness an architectural and imperial frame.