Book Description

Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist. Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Arnim launched her career as a writer with her satirical and semi-autobiographical Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Published anonymously, it chronicled the protagonist Elizabeth's struggles to create a garden on the family estate and her attempts to integrate into German aristocratic Junker society. In it, she fictionalized her husband as “The Man of Wrath”. It was reprinted twenty times by May 1899, a year after its publication. A bitter-sweet memoir and companion to it was The Solitary Summer. Other works, such as The Benefactress The Adventures of Elizabeth on Rügen Vera and Love were also semi-autobiographical. Some titles ensued that deal with protest against domineering Junkertum and witty observations of life in provincial Germany, including The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight and Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther. She would sign her twenty or so books, after the first, initially as “by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden” and later simply as “By Elizabeth”. In 1909, The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight was turned into a play called The Cottage in the Air, and in 1929 into the film The Runaway Princess, directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Mady Christians. Although Arnim never wrote a conventional autobiography, All the Dogs of My Life, an account of her love for her pets, contains many glimpses of her glittering social circle. Contents: 1. Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898) 2. The Solitary Summer (1899) 3. The April Baby's Book of Tunes (1900) (Illustrated by Kate Greenaway) 4. The Benefactress (1901) 5. Princess Priscilla's Fortnight (1905) 6. Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907) 7. The Pastor's Wife (1914) 8. Christine (1917) (written under the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley) 9. Christopher and Columbus (1919) 10. In the Mountains (1920) 11. Vera (1921) 12. The Enchanted April (1922)