Beard's Roman Women

Beard's Roman Women is a 1977 novel by British novelist Anthony Burgess. Dated "Montalbuccio-Monte Carlo-Eze-Callian, Summer 1975", according to Burgess it was written in the back of his Bedford Dormobile and "partly in the bedroom of a small hotel run by Swiss homosexuals" (You've Had Your Time). The novel is set in La Dolce Vita Rome and is apparently based on Burgess's experience of being widowed in the mid-1960s. Photographs in the original e... more

Beard's Roman Women is a 1977 novel by British novelist Anthony Burgess. Dated "Montalbuccio-Monte Carlo-Eze-Callian, Summer 1975", according to Burgess it was written in the back of his Bedford Dormobile and "partly in the bedroom of a small hotel run by Swiss homosexuals" (You've Had Your Time). The novel is set in La Dolce Vita Rome and is apparently based on Burgess's experience of being widowed in the mid-1960s. Photographs in the original edition were by David Robinson. Ronald Beard jets off to Hollywood and meets Paola Lucrezia Belli, an Italian photographer and descendant of the Roman dialect poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli. Various comic adventures ensue as the narrative switches to the Eternal City. The book is an interesting companion piece to Burgess's next novel, Abba Abba (1977): the Roman setting (some 150 years apart), references to the poet Belli, and the focus on the Romantic poets. In Abba Abba John Keats is the main character; here it's Byron and Shelley as the... less