Up at the Villa is a 1941 novella by William Somerset Maugham about a young widow caught among three men: her suitor, her one-night stand, and her confidant.

Her late husband Matthew, whom she married at 21 because she loved him, turned out to be an alcoholic, a gambler, a womaniser, and a wife-beater.

The Leonards (a couple who do not appear in person in the novel) offer Panton their 16th-century villa on a hill above Florence, Italy, for an extended stay.

During dinner at a restaurant with some of her acquaintances—among them the old Princess San Ferdinando, an American who is said to have been a "loose woman" in her day—they listen to a young man playing the violin.

At the end of the evening, the Princess tries to set Mary up with Rowley Flint, a young Englishman of independent means and risky reputation, by asking her to give him a lift back to his hotel.

They begin to talk, and Mary learns that he is a 23-year-old Austrian art student who has fled his country because of Nazi persecution.

When Mary thinks it is time for Richter to leave and the latter, to her dismay, asks when he will be able to see her again, the idyll quickly deteriorates.

Mary remembers the revolver her suitor, 54-year-old Sir Edgar Swift, has forced upon her as a means of protection.

When the party see Mary and Flint embracing each other as they pretend to be lovers, they start singing "La donna è mobile" and drive on.

Sir Edgar Swift, who has known her and her parents since she was a little child, arrives, planning to renew his suit since she was widowed.

He had told her of an impending promotion to a high government post in colonial India and his need for a suitable wife.

The movie starred Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne Bancroft, James Fox, Derek Jacobi, and Sean Penn.

Somerset Maugham donated the manuscript of Up at the Villa to Rupert Hart-Davis to sell in 1960 to raise money for the London Library; it sold for £1,100.