Diane Josefowicz is the author of Ready, Set, Oh: A Novel (Flexible Press, 2022); L’Air du Temps (1985) (Regal House, 2024); and Guardians & Saints: Stories, forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. With Jed Z. Buchwald, she is also the author of two histories of French Egyptology: The Zodiac of Paris (2010) and The Riddle of the Rosetta (2020), both published by Princeton University Press. Her translations of Anna de Noailles have appeared in L’Esprit Literary Review and were nominated in 2024 for a Pushcart Prize.

Anna de Noailles (1876–1933), a writer and poet with close ties to Marcel Proust, was a leading figure of the French fin-de-siècle. She wrote four novels and many volumes of poems, co-founded the Prix Femina, and was an associate of La Nouvelle Revue Française which, in association with Gallimard, became one of the leading publishers of her time (and ours). Inspired by deNoailles’ extensive travels in Italy, “A Roman Morning” first appeared in her late volume of essays, Exactitudes, published in Paris by Bernard Grasset in 1930.