Having ridden through populated places during most of the day, she entered an expansive, solitary valley in which she proceeded until evening without seeing anyone. As often happens to many who ask for and desire death every hour but then, when they see it close, try with all their might to escape it, so was the case of the unhappy Urania. As the night was approaching and she was alone in that solitary place, tired of riding and quite feeble because of her long fast, she felt her heart stung by such a great dread of her own pain that, had she known where to take refuge for the night to save her life, she would have done it very willingly, because she no longer wanted to die so basely for any reason in the world.
From Urania: a romance (120)
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Originally written probably around 1556-1558 according to Valeria Finucci
Giulia Bigolina (ca. 1518-ca. 1569) was the only (that we know of) short story and fiction woman writer of the Italian Renaissance.
According to Valeria Finucci, Urania “constitutes both the first female fictional long prose narrative and the first female treatise on the worth of women in Italian.” Read more about Giulia Bigolina and her work here.
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