The Enchanted April

Elizabeth von Arnim was born on 31 August 1866 in Australia. She was cousin to the writer Katherine Mansfield. In 1890 she married her first husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Prussian aristocrat, with whom she had five children. Elizabeth and her German Garden, published anonymously in 1898, was a barely fictionalised account of Elizabeth’s life and the creation of her garden at the family home of Nassenheide in Pomerania, where Hugh Walpole and E. M. Forster were tutors to her children. Its instant success was followed by many more novels, including Vera (1921) and The Enchanted April (1922), and another almost-autobiography, All the Dogs of My Life (1936). She separated from Count von Arnim in 1908, and after his death two years later she built a house in Switzerland, marrying John Francis Stanley Russell in 1916. This marriage also ended in separation in 1919 when Elizabeth moved to America, where she died on 9 February 1941, aged 74.

'Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy' 
 
Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, cowed and neglected by their husbands, make a daring plan: they will have a holiday. Leaving a drab and rainy London one April and arriving on the shores of the Mediterranean, they discover a flower-filled paradise of beauty, warmth and leisure. Joined by the beautiful Lady Caroline and domineering Mrs Fisher, also in flight from the burdens of their daily lives, the four women proceed to transform themselves and their prospects. 
 
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Elizabeth and her German Garden

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' "Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs, - useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them" ' 
 
Taking respite from the Man of Wrath, her children and her stifling household, Elizabeth discovers that the path to joy lies in having a garden, rather than a room, of one's own. This enchanting semi-autobiographical novel delighted readers when it first appeared in 1898 and has never been out of print since. 
 
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Cousin of Katherine Mansfield and lover of H.G. Wells, Elizabeth von Arnim was at the hub of the literary and political society of her time. She was born in Australia in 1866 but grew up in England, and began her career in 1898 with the semi-autobiographical Elizabeth and Her German Garden. She was married twice and died in 1941.

Witty, charming, irreverent and irresistible, these are the diaries of Elizabeth - hopeless host, inattentive wife, absent mistress, devoted gardener (though she'll never be seen with a shovel) and wholehearted lover of the great outdoors.

An extraordinary piece of work...it has a freshness, a freakish charm, an irrepressible energy

A gem of a book: rare, simple, innocent and charming

Unusual in the way that the sympathetic female narrator either cheerfully disregarded or, more often than not, gently mocked her husband and family. The book was a wild success and by 1899 it had run through 21 editions.

A witty tale about marrying a richer, older man and finding liberation from a stifling world of elitism through gardening. It was a risky tale for its time, and still feels modern on both love and the garden.

The psychology is shrewd and adroit and the dialogue is witty

Elizabeth von Arnim had a neat wit, a wild sense of comedy, and a vision - continually thwarted though it was - of potential happiness.

Meet Elizabeth and discover there is no greater happiness to be found than when lost in a wilderness of a garden, with bird cherries, lilacs, hollyhocks and lilies crowding the vision. This is her sanctuary from a host of unreasonable demands, whether from the Man of Wrath (husband), babies, servants and (worst of all horrors) house guests. Plunge into her charming diaries and be warned: you won't be able to remain indoors.

Vera

Reportedly the inspiration for Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, this is a brilliantly dark exploration of marriage from the author of The Enchanted April

[Her books are] a revelation in their wit and... dry, unsentimental treatment of the relationship between men and women

Von Arnim didn't have much patience with the male ego, and she didn't have much more for the women who bowed beneath it

Mike Newell, director of 'The Enchanted April'

Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss are both reeling from recent unhappiness when they meet and swiftly fall in love. Lucy is Wemyss’s ‘sweet girl’, and to Lucy, Everard is the whole world. The only blot on Lucy’s happiness is the shadowy figure of Wemyss’s first wife, Vera, who died in mysterious circumstances. But it is not until the happy couple return home and begin their life of wedded bliss that Lucy really begins to wonder: what did happen to Vera?

Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther

An epistolary novel about love, friendship and the search for happiness from the author of The Enchanted April

What on earth could have induced Mr Anstruther to fall in love with Fraulein Schmidt? He is an eligible English bachelor from a good family with great expectations; she is the plain, poor, ‘spinster’ daughter of a German scholar. But Rose-Marie Schmidt is also funny, intelligent, brave and gifted with an irrepressible talent for happiness. The real question is, does Mr Anstruther know how lucky he is?

Elizabeth Von Arnim

Salley Vickers

The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim's brilliant, irrepressible novella, tells the tale of four very different women who, on answering an advertisement in The Times, find themselves far away from the drizzle of London and instead in the warmth of an Italian sun. There, alongside the lapping of the Mediterranean, the women's spirits begin to shift, and quite unexpected changes take place.

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