Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941)
Author of The Enchanted April
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Also wrote under the name of Alice Cholmondeley, and in first publications only under her pen-name "Elizabeth"
Series
Works by Elizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim's Collected Works: The Enchanted April, The Solitary Summer, The Benefactress, Vera, and More! ( 11 Works) (2023) 24 copies
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 16) (2017) 11 copies
Elizabeth's children 1 copy
Prisoners 1 copy
»Mein himmlisches Königreich«: Gartenglück mit Elizabeth von Arnim (insel taschenbuch) (2015) 1 copy
The Danvers Jewels 1 copy
The Lowest Rung 1 copy
1993 1 copy
A Devotee 1 copy
Sigurd Eckdal’s Bride 1 copy
Associated Works
Gender in Modernism: New Geographies, Complex Intersections (2007) — Contributor — 12 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Arnim, Elizabeth von
- Legal name
- Beauchamp, Mary Annette (birth)
- Other names
- "Elizabeth" (pen name)
Cholmondeley, Alice (pseudonym)
Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin
Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell - Birthdate
- 1866-08-31
- Date of death
- 1941-02-09
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Royal College of Music
- Occupations
- novelist
- Relationships
- Mansfield, Katherine (cousin)
Russell, Bertrand (brother-in-law)
Wells, H. G. (lover)
de Charms, Leslie (daughter)
Walpole, Hugh (friend; tutor of her children)
Forster, E. M. (friend) (show all 8)
Earl Russell (2nd husband)
von Arnim-Schlagenthin, Henning August (1st husband) - Short biography
- Born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Sydney, Australia. Married first to Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, then to Francis, 2nd Earl Russell. Australia was the setting of the family's vacation home, and when she was three years old, they returned to England. After her first husband's death in 1910, she lived in Switzerland, England, and the USA, and entertained a large circle of literary and society friends. She produced some 20 novels, semi-autobiographical works, and memoirs, beginning with Elizabeth and her German Garden (1898), and including The Enchanted April (1922), which was adapted as a Broadway play in 1925; a successful film in 1992; a Tony Award-nominated stage play in 2003; a musical play in 2010; and a serial on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
- Cause of death
- influenza
- Nationality
- England
UK - Birthplace
- Kirribilli Point, New South Wales, Australia
- Places of residence
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Valais, Switzerland
London, Middlesex, England, UK
Berlin, Germany
Nassenheide, Pomerania, Germany
Charleston, South Carolina, USA - Place of death
- Charleston, South Carolina, USA
- Burial location
- St Margaret's Church, Tylers Green, Penn, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
- Disambiguation notice
- Also wrote under the name of Alice Cholmondeley, and in first publications only under her pen-name "Elizabeth"
Members
Discussions
April Read: Elizabeth von Arnim in Virago Modern Classics (May 2017)
Elizabeth von Arnim in Tattered but still lovely (October 2014)
GROUP READ: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim in 2013 Category Challenge (April 2013)
Reviews
A Case of Stendhal’s Syndrome?
Set in the 1920s , The Enchanted April is a story of four English women’s vacation in a castle on the Italian Riviera and the effect the beauty of the castle, the vistas, and more especially its gardens have on them.
One of the women, a Mrs Wilkins is clearly overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and has a spiritual transformation, similar to that of George Harrison when he “found himself” in India in the mid sixties.
So sure is Ms Wilkins that all you show more need is love, that she telegrams her husband who she previously feared and felt was cold, asking him to join her. Surely he too would feel the love. Mrs Wilkins’ bliss is contagious, so much so that she persuades her friend Mrs Arbuthnot to do the same.
The other members of the group, Lady Caroline Dester and Mrs Fisher who are both “spinsters”, appear less affected, though Lady Caroline becomes more self-aware. She is more able to come to terms with her own beauty, which has so far been a hindrance in her young life. Mrs Fisher, who is considered ancient at 65 and who is still stuck in the Victorian era remains somewhat immune, though she occasionally has feelings she can’t quite work out.
As for the two husbands, von Arnim has little time for the men. Mr Wilkins becomes warmer toward his wife as his feelings for the female sex are rekindled by the beauty of Lady Caroline if not the garden. And Mr Arbuthnott sees that Mrs Arbuthnott has a sex appeal that he has been unaware of for many a year.
Which leave the main character in the book, the garden. As an avid gardner myself, I delighted in the long paragraphs describing in exquisite detail, the different flowers and shrubs, and their placement around the castle, and in some cases around the individual women when they act as shields allowing the individual women to revel in their solitudes.
The writing is crisp and humorous. The class distinctions separate Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester from the Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, the former clearly seeing the other women as “below them”. But what the women have in common is that they are not men.
The men in the novel appear as necessary appendages. Accessories. Accessories that are generally found wanting.
I came saw from the book intrigued by the author. I wanted to find out more, and did.
I’m glad that I discovered von Arnim. I thoroughly enjoyed The Enchanted April and rated it a deserving 4. show less
Set in the 1920s , The Enchanted April is a story of four English women’s vacation in a castle on the Italian Riviera and the effect the beauty of the castle, the vistas, and more especially its gardens have on them.
One of the women, a Mrs Wilkins is clearly overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and has a spiritual transformation, similar to that of George Harrison when he “found himself” in India in the mid sixties.
So sure is Ms Wilkins that all you show more need is love, that she telegrams her husband who she previously feared and felt was cold, asking him to join her. Surely he too would feel the love. Mrs Wilkins’ bliss is contagious, so much so that she persuades her friend Mrs Arbuthnot to do the same.
The other members of the group, Lady Caroline Dester and Mrs Fisher who are both “spinsters”, appear less affected, though Lady Caroline becomes more self-aware. She is more able to come to terms with her own beauty, which has so far been a hindrance in her young life. Mrs Fisher, who is considered ancient at 65 and who is still stuck in the Victorian era remains somewhat immune, though she occasionally has feelings she can’t quite work out.
As for the two husbands, von Arnim has little time for the men. Mr Wilkins becomes warmer toward his wife as his feelings for the female sex are rekindled by the beauty of Lady Caroline if not the garden. And Mr Arbuthnott sees that Mrs Arbuthnott has a sex appeal that he has been unaware of for many a year.
Which leave the main character in the book, the garden. As an avid gardner myself, I delighted in the long paragraphs describing in exquisite detail, the different flowers and shrubs, and their placement around the castle, and in some cases around the individual women when they act as shields allowing the individual women to revel in their solitudes.
The writing is crisp and humorous. The class distinctions separate Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester from the Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, the former clearly seeing the other women as “below them”. But what the women have in common is that they are not men.
The men in the novel appear as necessary appendages. Accessories. Accessories that are generally found wanting.
I came saw from the book intrigued by the author. I wanted to find out more, and did.
I’m glad that I discovered von Arnim. I thoroughly enjoyed The Enchanted April and rated it a deserving 4. show less
This is such a weird book to encounter in my time and place, written as it is in a vastly different one -- 1898 Germany, by a member of the aristocratic class. Parts of it are lovely (Elizabeth discovering the garden and solitude and loving her April, May and June babies), parts horrifying (Elizabeth's attitude towards "lesser" beings, her staff and the peasants who are kidnapped to work on her estate), parts deeply depressing (the expectations for women, the completely accepted set of ideas show more that they are also lesser and that it is necessary to beat them for their own happiness), and parts just weird (the way an unwelcome houseguest is treated).
I think, honestly, that so much of this book is pointed social commentary on the time and place that she lives in that I can't really figure out how to take it. Does she really think that poor people are lesser beings? Certainly that was a perfectly unremarkable attitude for her time, but the parallels with the Man of Wrath's commentary on the lesser capabilities of women are so clearly set out that it's hard to know if she's showing her own bias or deeply criticizing both perceptions. Why is she so frustrated and uncomfortable with Minora? And why is she never referred to as an English person herself, despite the fact that she was not raised in Germany, and even the semi-fictional Elizabeth in the book was clearly raised in Britain?
I loved her descriptions of the garden and her fascination with growing things. I loved her development as a gardener. I loved that she refers to her children as 'the April baby' or 'the June baby' -- there's something really sweet about that. The audio version is very well read. I just have no idea what to think about this book on the whole. It is fascinating.
Advanced Listening copy provided by Libro.fm. show less
I think, honestly, that so much of this book is pointed social commentary on the time and place that she lives in that I can't really figure out how to take it. Does she really think that poor people are lesser beings? Certainly that was a perfectly unremarkable attitude for her time, but the parallels with the Man of Wrath's commentary on the lesser capabilities of women are so clearly set out that it's hard to know if she's showing her own bias or deeply criticizing both perceptions. Why is she so frustrated and uncomfortable with Minora? And why is she never referred to as an English person herself, despite the fact that she was not raised in Germany, and even the semi-fictional Elizabeth in the book was clearly raised in Britain?
I loved her descriptions of the garden and her fascination with growing things. I loved her development as a gardener. I loved that she refers to her children as 'the April baby' or 'the June baby' -- there's something really sweet about that. The audio version is very well read. I just have no idea what to think about this book on the whole. It is fascinating.
Advanced Listening copy provided by Libro.fm. show less
** spoiler alert ** It started out so well. And ended with my throwing the book across the bed, telling the cats and the dog: “I have had enough, I’m done here.” Four unacquainted women: three young, one older; two married (and not happy), one single and sick of the whole pairing-up game, and one widow. They are sharing a splendiferous Italian castle clotted with flowers at an impossibly gorgeous and gentle seaside, in order to escape, ponder, relax, wander, and maybe just have four show more weeks of happiness on holiday. They don’t particularly get along or understand one another; there are irritations and resentments. As the days unroll, we are privy to their contemplations, sadness, wonderings, memories, and thoughts of what they should or might do next. So far, so good - sometimes lovely, touching, sympathetic. They begin to unbend to each other a little, a friendship and even affection begins to blossom. And then one of them invites her husband to join them.
Uh-oh. And then the other married one does the same. It all turns silly and coy and gooey and all the subtlety and emotional insight goes out the window. One of the husbands is actively pursuing the impossibly lovely single woman (and she really is annoying and not credible), and she smoothly covers up for him. He remains infatuated, begging to kiss her shoes. And then he gushes that he can only love her more because she has “the loyalty of a man.” At which point I was finito.
After 60 pages, I was ready to look up other novels by von Arnim. Another 60 pages, and I scratched that idea. Her philosophy clearly is that a woman can only reach her fullest self through her relationship with a man, even when he is a skeevy, sneaky, conniving skunk. Even the cranky elder widow breaks out into kindness, tolerance, and a certain maternal charm when visited by the handsome, wealthy, boyish owner of the castle…who has, by the way, instantly jettisoned his appreciation for the gentle, retiring, unhappily-married woman the moment he lays eyes on the pretty one.
Just no. Ick. show less
Uh-oh. And then the other married one does the same. It all turns silly and coy and gooey and all the subtlety and emotional insight goes out the window. One of the husbands is actively pursuing the impossibly lovely single woman (and she really is annoying and not credible), and she smoothly covers up for him. He remains infatuated, begging to kiss her shoes. And then he gushes that he can only love her more because she has “the loyalty of a man.” At which point I was finito.
After 60 pages, I was ready to look up other novels by von Arnim. Another 60 pages, and I scratched that idea. Her philosophy clearly is that a woman can only reach her fullest self through her relationship with a man, even when he is a skeevy, sneaky, conniving skunk. Even the cranky elder widow breaks out into kindness, tolerance, and a certain maternal charm when visited by the handsome, wealthy, boyish owner of the castle…who has, by the way, instantly jettisoned his appreciation for the gentle, retiring, unhappily-married woman the moment he lays eyes on the pretty one.
Just no. Ick. show less
Hardly believing their own daring, two women who barely know each other rent an Italian castle with the intention of leaving their husbands spending a month there. To defray the costs, they advertise for two others, and a very disparate quartet of strangers and near-strangers make their way to the Italian castle. Naturally, they bring a lot of baggage with them, and some of that baggage is their actual husbands turning up. With two of the women looking askance at the other two, and the other show more two barely noticing, somehow the enchantment does grow along with the flowers.
It's very funny, and also poignant. There are self-imposed prisons of misunderstanding, grief, age and even beauty, which this Italian holiday may help them break out of, if they can find the way. show less
It's very funny, and also poignant. There are self-imposed prisons of misunderstanding, grief, age and even beauty, which this Italian holiday may help them break out of, if they can find the way. show less
Lists
Five star books (1)
A Novel Cure (1)
Out of Copyright (1)
Folio Society (1)
discontinued (1)
MPLClassics (1)
1920s (1)
Female Author (1)
Persephone (1)
Garden-fiction (3)
Best Beach Reads (2)
Comfort Reads (2)
el (1)
Spring Books (1)
Reading LIst (1)
Schwob Nederland (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 47
- Also by
- 9
- Members
- 8,126
- Popularity
- #2,978
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 303
- ISBNs
- 802
- Languages
- 14
- Favorited
- 52
