BVBook Verdict
Essential Read

The Marriage Portrait

by Maggie O'Farrell · 2022

Literary Fiction · ranked #107 in category

Lucrezia de' Medici, married at fifteen to Alfonso II of Ferrara, becomes convinced that her husband is planning to kill her. O'Farrell's novel is based on the real woman who may have been the subject of Browning's 'My Last Duchess', and asks what it meant to be a young woman of extraordinary ability given in marriage to a powerful man who required her compliance.

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The verdict

Category
Literary Fiction
First published
2022 · 2020s
Author
Maggie O'Farrell
Standing
Essential Read

More by Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet Maggie O'Farrell · 2020 Essential Read See details →

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