Presented for the first time in a critical English edition, "Urania: A Romance" provides modern readers with a rare glimpse into the novel and novella forms at a time when narrative genres were not only being invented but, in the hands of women like Giulia Bigolina (1518?-1569?), used as vehicles for literary experimentation.The first known prose romance written by a woman in Italian, Bigolina's "Urania" centers on the monomaniacal love of a female character falling into melancholy when her beloved leaves her for a more beautiful woman. A tale that includes many of the conventions that would later become standards of the genre--cross-dressing, travel, epic skirmishes, and daring deeds--"Urania" also contains the earliest treatise on the worth of women.Also included in this volume, the novella "Giulia Camposampiero" is the only extant part of a probable longer narrative written in the style of the "Decameron." While employing some of those same gender and role reversals as "Urania, " including the privileging of heroic constancy in both men and women, it chronicles the tribulations that a couple undergoes until their secret marriage is publicly recognized.