8 h 27 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens to love when rank, money, and family expectations press against the heart?
In La Signorina, Gerolamo Rovetta explores an Italian society of drawing rooms, ambition, and closely guarded feelings. Love meets the demands of rank and family expectation. What people feel in private comes under pressure from the world around them, where money and social standing carry weight.
This is a novel of manners and feeling, set against Italian life in a changing age. Old customs meet new ambitions, while hidden things help shape a life. Rovetta brings social pressure close to the heart, inviting you to notice how speech, dress, and behavior reveal hope and fear.
What you’ll discover
- Love under pressure Explore how private feeling meets the demands of money, class, and duty.
- The drawing room world Enter a society where ambition and social standing press upon personal hopes.
- The weight of secrets Consider how what people keep hidden can shape the course of a life.
- Details that speak Notice how speech, dress, and behavior offer clues to rank, hope, and fear.
- An Italy in change Discover the tensions between old customs and new ambitions in Italian social life.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy nineteenth-century Italian fiction, witty drawing-room comedy, love stories that mature over many years, and warm portraits of teachers, children and friends in the streets of old Milan.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A secret visit goes wrong
- A friend's honor becomes a duel
- The search for Lulu begins
- A small girl takes over his house
- Warnings against the baroness
- Two years of work and a quiet affection
- The baroness returns and old habits revive
- A girl grows up on the hill
- Jealousies in Lodignola and Milan
Who’s who
- Francesco RoeroA rich, charming young playwright, torn between a society beauty and a duty he never expected, who wants to do something worthwhile with his life.
- Baroness Stefania ArcoleiCalled Fani, a blonde, calculating society hostess who wants admiration, control over her admirers, and a place at the center of Milan.
- Lulu (Elena Maria Savoldi)A black-haired child, later a spirited young woman, who loves her Cochi from her earliest memory and means to marry him.
- Signora EugeniaA retired schoolteacher with white hair and great pride, who becomes Lulu's devoted mother and keeps a private feeling for Roero.
- OlivieriRoero's lawyer and loyal friend, who warns him against the baroness and later finds himself hopelessly fond of a girl half his age.
- Nespola (Pippo Savoldi)A loud, funny, poor journalist who drags Roero into a duel and leaves behind a mysterious name.
- Nino MoroThe steward's dark-haired son, full of half-learned socialist ideas, who falls quietly in love with Elena and tries to stay away.
- Don Giulio ArcoleiThe baroness's solemn, conservative husband, a city councillor who talks of building plans and fails to understand his wife.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 8 h 27 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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La Signorina
A playwright's secret rendezvous is cut short by a friend shouting under his window, and a dog's name changes his life.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
La Signorina is a novel by Gerolamo Rovetta, who died in 1910, set in Milan and the Lombard countryside in the late nineteenth century. It follows Francesco Roero, a rich young playwright, across many years of his life, from a stolen hour in his studio to a quiet village house on a hill.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A secret visit goes wrong
The story opens in Milan in late January. Francesco Roero, a fashionable young playwright, waits behind the door of his ground-floor apartment on Via Principe Amedeo. He is waiting for Baroness Stefania Arcolei, whom her circle calls Fani. She is married, devout, blonde and very sure of her own charm. For three months he has begged her to come and see his paintings, one by Segantini and one by Favretto.
She arrives at last, an hour late. Roero is too eager, and she is angry at first, then softened by his pleading. Her real weakness is art. She takes the chair at his desk and talks about the two painters with wit and warmth. Segantini, she says, is serious and white and blue, while Favretto is a laughing man in red and green.
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What is La Signorina about?
It follows playwright Francesco Roero over many years. A dying friend's last word leads him to adopt a small girl, Lulu, and her teacher Signora Eugenia becomes part of his home. The novel weaves love, society and duty together.
Who is Lulu in La Signorina?
Lulu is Elena Maria Savoldi, the little daughter of the journalist Nespola. Roero takes her in after the duel, and she grows from a stubborn child into a spirited young woman called Elena, but she remains Lulu to those who love her.
Who wrote La Signorina and when is it set?
Gerolamo Rovetta, an Italian writer who died in 1910, wrote it. The story is set in Milan and the Lombard countryside in the late nineteenth century, and ranges from fashionable drawing rooms to village life.
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