First published 2011
Villa Cimbrone rises above the Italian village of Ravello, a place where fantasy meets reality. This acclaimed work, named a Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction book and Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction title for 2011, illuminates the hidden lives of remarkable women who lived on society's edges. Alice Keppel moved between the beds of Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales. Eve Fairfax inspired the sculptures of Auguste Rodin. Novelist Violet Trefusis carried on her famous affair with Vita Sackville-West. These women never met, yet the Villa Cimbrone binds their stories together. Michael Holroyd weaves their forgotten achievements and family secrets into a tapestry of lives that history overlooked. The biographer himself appears in these pages, examining his own role as he navigates the complex maze of biographical investigation. Holroyd rescues these women from the periphery and places them center stage, revealing the fragile threads that connect human lives across time and the mysterious power of place to unite disparate stories.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: forgotten-achievements, hidden-lives, interconnected-stories
Setting: Italy, Ravello, Villa Cimbrone
Period: 19th-century, 20th-century
272 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux