Rome and a Villa

By Eleanor Clark

Book Overview

"These essays gather up Rome and hold it before us, bristling and dense and dreamlike, with every scene drenched in the sound of fountains, of leaping and falling water." -- The New Yorker

"Perhaps the finest book ever to be written about a city." -- New York Times

Bringing to life the legendary city's beauty and magic in all its many facets, Eleanor Clark's masterful collection of vignettes, Rome and a Villa, has transported readers for generations.

In 1947 a young American woman named Eleanor Clark went to Rome on a Guggenheim fellowship to write a novel. But instead of a novel, Clark created a series of sketches of Roman life written mostly between 1948 and 1951. Wandering the streets of this legendary city, Eleanor fell under Rome's spell--its pace of life, the wry outlook of its men and women, its magnificent history and breathtaking contribution to world culture. Rome is life itself--a sensuous, hectic, chaotic, and utterly fascinating blend of the comic and the tragic. Clark highlights Roman art and architecture, including Hadrian's Villa--an enormous, unfinished palace--as a prism to view the city and its history, and offers a lovely portrait of the Cimitero acattolico--long known as the Protestant cemetery--where Keats, Shelley, and other foreign notables rest.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062363409
• ISBN13: 9780062363404
• Release Date: February 2015
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Best book on Rome & Hadrian's Villa in English

"You walk close to your dreams"--that's the first sentence of Eleanor Clark's chapter on the fountains of Rome. Her book is lyrical but informative, and for some readers, perhaps too heavy with information, but I have found it indispensible both while in Rome and later back in the US thinking about where I had been. Orignally published as separate articles in The New Yorker magazine, each chapter focuses on a particular subject. One of my favorites is the section on Protestant Cemetery (actually the cemetery of the non-Catholics), where Keats, Shelley, Gramsci and many other non-Catholic writers, politicians, diplomats, and artists are buried. This is not a typical guidebook, however, and anyone who buys it in order to get maps, pictures, and restaurant tips will be disappointed. Nevertheless, it is an excellent guide to the city--it is thoughtful, it is full of strong opinions, and it is sometimes very funny, too. Eleanor Clark was married to the writer Robert Penn Warren, whose career overshadowed hers. Those who know his work but do not know the work of Clark may be surprised to find out just how good she is.

As good as a vacation...

If you need to escape from the drudgery of your everyday life for awhile than this is the book for you. Clark's masterpiece is as good as a month in the country. And not just any country either. All of Italy is opened to you by the mind and imagination of Eleanor Clark. She covers the territory from the haunted villa of Hadrian to the dangerous hills of Sicily and the cool depths of Saint Peter's Cathedral. You will meet with the ghost of the Emperor himself, a modern gangster cum matinee idol and the pilgrims of a Papal Jubilee.Clark's prose is a whirlwind that leaves you breathless. She throws off sparks in all directions like a Catherine's Wheel. You won't "get" all of this book on the first go round but it is well worth a second and a third reading.