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The Madonna of the Seven Moons
Barcelona. 19 cm. 410 p., 2 h. Encuadernación en tapa dura de editorial. Colección 'Grandes Exitos Universales de la Literatura Contemporanea'. Traducción del inglés por J. Romero de Tejada .. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario.
- GenresFiction
410 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1967
3 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Margery Lawrence
56 books15 followersMargery Harriet Lawrence (alternate pen names: Jerome Latimer, Margery H. Lawrence) was an English romantic fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and detective fiction author who specialized in ghost stories.
Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.
Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.
Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tales of horror and the supernatural that are mindful of the classic ghost story tradition but adorned with enough contemporary flourishes" to demonstrate that Lawrence was comfortable working variants on this tradition. These stories often appeared in British pulp magazines such as The Sovereign Magazine and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story prior to book publication.
During the 1920s she wrote general fiction, and her 1925 romance novel Red Heels was filmed by the Austrian film company Sascha Film as Das Spielzeug von Paris. A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brandt, Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.
In 1941, she published another collection of short fiction, Strange Caravan (Robert Hale, 1941). A list of her short stories to 1945 also includes: Snapdragon; and The Floating Cafe.
Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer. Lawrence stated that this series was inspired by Algernon Blackwood's John Silence stories and Dion Fortune's Dr. Taverner series. Like May Sinclair before her, Lawrence became a confirmed spiritualist and believer in reincarnation in later years, and her book is heavy with didactic occultist dialogue. Another well-known supernatural volume is Master of Shadows (1959).
The Rent in the Veil is a fantasy involving a timeslip to Ancient Rome, and Bride of Darkness is a tale of witchcraft in the modern world.
In the foreword to Ferry Over Jordan (Psychic Book Club, 1944), Lawrence explains that during the latter part of 1941 she had written a further group of articles on Spiritualism for Psychic News. It was the resulting large number of inquiries that prompted editor Maurice Barbanell to suggest that Lawrence compile and expand upon those articles in book form, which she undertook at London between August 1942 and May 1943. The book was intended to be a primer on the much-discussed subject of Spiritualism. Apprehensive that her readers might be disappointed that her latest book was not a further novel or book of short stories, Lawrence took care to explain that she had not recently "taken to Spiritualism", but rather had been deeply interested in it for many years:
"My interest in it dates actually from the moment when I saw a near relation three nights after he died, when he gave me specific instructions about the finding of a box containing important papers. They were found precisely where he said--and from that moment I became deeply interested in what, throughout this book, I have called the "Other Side". Somewhere that man was obviously still alive! Somewhere he was thinking of us, anxious to help, caring what happened; in a word, he was still alive somewhere, and I was determined to find out where" [foreword, p. 5].
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery...]
Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.
Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.
Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tales of horror and the supernatural that are mindful of the classic ghost story tradition but adorned with enough contemporary flourishes" to demonstrate that Lawrence was comfortable working variants on this tradition. These stories often appeared in British pulp magazines such as The Sovereign Magazine and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story prior to book publication.
During the 1920s she wrote general fiction, and her 1925 romance novel Red Heels was filmed by the Austrian film company Sascha Film as Das Spielzeug von Paris. A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brandt, Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.
In 1941, she published another collection of short fiction, Strange Caravan (Robert Hale, 1941). A list of her short stories to 1945 also includes: Snapdragon; and The Floating Cafe.
Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer. Lawrence stated that this series was inspired by Algernon Blackwood's John Silence stories and Dion Fortune's Dr. Taverner series. Like May Sinclair before her, Lawrence became a confirmed spiritualist and believer in reincarnation in later years, and her book is heavy with didactic occultist dialogue. Another well-known supernatural volume is Master of Shadows (1959).
The Rent in the Veil is a fantasy involving a timeslip to Ancient Rome, and Bride of Darkness is a tale of witchcraft in the modern world.
In the foreword to Ferry Over Jordan (Psychic Book Club, 1944), Lawrence explains that during the latter part of 1941 she had written a further group of articles on Spiritualism for Psychic News. It was the resulting large number of inquiries that prompted editor Maurice Barbanell to suggest that Lawrence compile and expand upon those articles in book form, which she undertook at London between August 1942 and May 1943. The book was intended to be a primer on the much-discussed subject of Spiritualism. Apprehensive that her readers might be disappointed that her latest book was not a further novel or book of short stories, Lawrence took care to explain that she had not recently "taken to Spiritualism", but rather had been deeply interested in it for many years:
"My interest in it dates actually from the moment when I saw a near relation three nights after he died, when he gave me specific instructions about the finding of a box containing important papers. They were found precisely where he said--and from that moment I became deeply interested in what, throughout this book, I have called the "Other Side". Somewhere that man was obviously still alive! Somewhere he was thinking of us, anxious to help, caring what happened; in a word, he was still alive somewhere, and I was determined to find out where" [foreword, p. 5].
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery...]
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 5, 2011
Una gran historia. Bien contada y que además mantiene el suspenso hasta el final. Bastante recomendable.
June 28, 2020
Una novela exquisita con un misterio y un final inesperado tremendamente bueno.
December 4, 2025
Margery Lawrence’s The Madonna of Seven Moons is an odd duck. It’s a potboiler, certainly, with all the melodrama one could wish for. But it’s also an absolutely heartbreaking story of a woman so bereft of freedom that her mind conjures a second personality. Maddalena is the unloved child of an impoverished nobleman whose sheltered childhood in a convent is marked by a traumatic encounter in which she encounters her father and his peasant mistress in flagrante delicto. This is followed quickly by marriage to a much older man, who, bewildered by the naivety of his child bride, eventually rapes her. These two incidents shatter her mind irrevocably, and for the next fifteen years, she alternates unknowingly between two halves of herself: As Maddalena, she remains the cosseted, pious, uncomplaining wife; as Rosanna, does as she wants and goes where she wishes, ruling her domain with an iron fist. When Maddalena’s bright young thing daughter returns from school abroad, the daughter’s thoughtless, selfish childishness prompts a final break, and her disappearance kicks off the action of the novel.
On the whole, it’s a pretty flawed piece of work, particularly in its refusal to hold the husband and daughter—both of whom it positions as fundamentally good, if misguided—to accounts. But even the trappings of conventional morality can’t displace the utter tragedy of Maddalena/Rosanna’s experience, and the chilling ending.
On the whole, it’s a pretty flawed piece of work, particularly in its refusal to hold the husband and daughter—both of whom it positions as fundamentally good, if misguided—to accounts. But even the trappings of conventional morality can’t displace the utter tragedy of Maddalena/Rosanna’s experience, and the chilling ending.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2020
No tengo idea de como llegó este libro a mi biblioteca, y la verdad no esperaba nada de él, pero me terminó sorprendiendo gratamente! Cuenta la historia de una mujer con doble personalidad, pero no diré mas para no "spoilear". Aunque la narración a ratos se vuelve lenta, rápidamente retoma el interés de lector. Hay muchas descripciones sobre lugares de Italia, hechas de manera vivida y colorida, una de las cosas que mas me gustaron. Asimismo, los personajes son interesantes y todos sirven un propósito a la trama, aunque en inicio no lo parezca. Se lo recomiendo a los amantes de las novelas de drama y misterio.
November 10, 2024
Novela que mezcla el drama con el suspense. Es muy entretenida y está escrita de forma tan magistral que Lawrence te transporta a la Italia del siglo pasado. Por su argumento recuerda a “El extraño caso del Dr. Jekyll y Mr. Hyde”, y si bien los precisos son inmensos, considero “La madona de las siete lunas” una novela más atrayente y realista, aunque en cuanto a valor filosófico el libro de Stevenson está a años luz.
April 16, 2018
My Mom made me read it! It means a lot to her. The language is old-fashioned but it was an interesting early novel about split personality.
January 14, 2023
Es una lastima que la autora se tarde tanto en presentar el misterio que da origen a la historia, por lo demás es una buena obra.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews