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What would you like to read?Search books, authors, genres, shelves, users...
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1855
A historical novel written in the mid-19th century. It presents a first-person, novelized memoir of Emma Hamilton as she moves through Rome and Naples, observing clerical power, courtly intrigue, and high society. The focus rests on Emma and Sir William Hamilton, with vivid cameos of Pius VI, Cardinal Ruffo, and the flamboyant Lord Bristol, blending travel narrative, salon life, and scandal. The likely arc is the making of Emma’s public persona within the volatile Italian world just before great European upheavals. The opening of the volume follows Emma’s journey to Rome, where she portrays Pope Pius VI’s self-regard, circles of gossip around the Braschi and Rezzonico families, and the rigid, fearful etiquette of Roman salons. She attends a disputation that the Pope abruptly quits, meets the witty cardinal de Bernis, and relays sharp anecdotes: the melting of Spanish coin for papal profit, a notorious inheritance case, and the fevered adoration of the castrato Veluti backstage. A street robbery leads to a papally sanctioned act of self-defense; then the narrative shifts into travel scenes along the Appian Way and across the Pontine Marshes, where Monsignor Ruffo appears doing a humane deed, before arrival in Naples. There Emma introduces the eccentric Lord Bristol as her “cavalier servente,” sketches the local diplomatic cast (the indolent Portuguese envoy, the forthright Austrian ambassador, and a Tuscan gossip-monger), contrasts doctors Cotugno and Gatti, and opens onto Neapolitan court politics around Queen Maria Carolina, Acton, and King Ferdinand.
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