Jenny Winge, a young Norwegian artist, lives abroad in Rome at the turn of the 20th century, socialising with fellow Bohemian expats and aspiring to a life of passionate creative work and personal integrity. When another Norwegian seeking freedom from the austere Protestant atmosphere at home enters her circle, she finds herself succumbing to a desire for affection and companionship that leads her to compromise her ideals. One failed relationship leads to another and soon Jenny is pregnant out of wedlock, facing a life far different from her dreams.Tiina Nunnally has here rendered the Nobel Prize-winning author's first major novel into fresh and vivid prose - and restored passages missing from the novel's first English translation. Marked by lush painterly descriptions and unflinching honesty in matters of the heart, Jenny is an exquisite and devastating account of one woman's search for autonomy. Unsparing, yet glowing with compassion, this novel of the struggle for emancipation feels as fresh today as when it was first written.



Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) began her writing career while working as a secretary to support her mother and sisters. The publication of her first novel allowed her to abandon office work, and she left her native Norway for Rome, where she met and eventually married a Norwegian painter. Jenny, originally published in Norway in 1911, marked Undset's breakthrough as a writer. A few years later her marriage ended, and she withdrew to a home in rural Norway, where she began work on her medieval trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928.