Elizabeth and Her German Garden

Last updated

The Von Arnim family manor in Nassenheide, Pomerania, where the story is set, c.1860 Rittergut Nassenheide Sammlung Duncker.jpg
The Von Arnim family manor in Nassenheide, Pomerania, where the story is set, c.1860

Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a novel by the Australian-born writer Elizabeth von Arnim, first published in 1898. It was very popular and frequently reprinted during the early years of the 20th century. [1]

Contents

The book earned over £10,000 in the first year of publication, with 11 reprints during 1898; by May 1899, it had been reprinted 21 times. [2] [3]

The book is the first in a series about the same character, "Elizabeth". It is noteworthy for originally being published without a named author. Von Arnim insisted that she must remain anonymous because she claimed her husband, the German aristocrat Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin  [ de ], whom she satirises in the book, would have found it unacceptable for his wife to write commercial fiction. [2]

Although the book is semi-autobiographical, the novelist E.M. Forster, who lived at the von Arnim estate in 1905, [4] working as a tutor to the family's children, wrote that there was in fact not much of a garden. "‘The German Garden itself ... did not make much impression.’ ... ‘[The house] appeared to be surrounded by paddocks and shrubberies’ while ‘in the summer’, he notes, ‘some flowers – mainly pansies, tulips, roses [appeared] ... and there were endless lupins ... [that] the Count was drilling for agricultural purposes’. But, Forster adds, ‘there was nothing of a show’." [2]

Count von Arnim sold the estate in 1910 due to financial problems. [5] The manor house was destroyed in a WWII British air raid on 6 January 1944. [6]

Plot summary

A semi-autobiographical story in the style of a year's diary written by the protagonist, Elizabeth. It is set on her husband's family estate at Nassenheide, Pomerania. Elizabeth gently mocks her husband, family and others around her as she describes her efforts to develop a garden on the estate. It includes commentary on nature and bourgeois German society, but is primarily humorous due to Elizabeth's frequent mistakes and her idiosyncratic outlook on life.

She looked down upon the frivolous fashions of her time writing “I believe all needlework and dressmaking is of the devil, designed to keep women from study.”

In the ITV series Downton Abbey, in the second episode of the second season, Joseph Molesley, Matthew Crawley's valet, lends a copy of Elizabeth and her German Garden to the head housemaid Anna Smith, as a tentative romantic gesture. [2] [3]

In July 2015, it was adapted in five episodes for the Book at Bedtime series on BBC Radio 4, and read by Caroline Martin. [7]

In the novel The Shell Seekers (1988) by Rosamunde Pilcher, Sophie reads Elizabeth and her German Garden. In chapter 9 ("Sophie“), Sophie says to Penelope: "I always go back to it. It comforts me. Soothes me. It reminds me of a world that once existed and will exist again when the war has finished."[ citation needed ]

In the novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, it is referred to by Elizabeth as having been the topic of discussion at the society meeting that she pretended had taken place on the night of the roast pork dinner.[ citation needed ]

Literature

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. M. Forster</span> English novelist and writer (1879–1970)

Edward Morgan Forster was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as a limited number of biographies and some pageant plays. He also co-authored the opera Billy Budd (1951). Many of his novels examine class differences and hypocrisy. His views as a humanist are at the heart of his work.

<i>The Woman Who Did</i> 1895 novel by Grant Allen

The Woman Who Did (1895) is a novel by Grant Allen about a young, self-assured middle-class woman who defies convention as a matter of principle and who is fully prepared to suffer the consequences of her actions. It was first published in London by John Lane in a series intended to promote the ideal of the "New Woman". It was adapted into a British silent film in 1915, The Woman Who Did, which was directed by Walter West, and later into a 1925 German film, Die Frau mit dem schlechten Ruf.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth von Arnim</span> Australian-born English writer, 1866–1941

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. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley for only one novel, Christine, published in 1917.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bettina von Arnim</span> 19th-century German writer

Bettina von Arnim, born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a German writer and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ida, Countess von Hahn-Hahn</span> German author

Countess Ida von Hahn-Hahn was a German author from a wealthy family who lost their fortune because of her father's eccentric spending. She defied convention by living with Adolf von Bystram unmarried for 21 years. Her writings about the German aristocracy were greatly favored by the general public of her time. Ida von Hahn-Hahn often wrote about the tragedies of the soul and was influenced by the French novelist George Sand. She "was an indefatigable campaigner for the emancipation of women" and her writings include many strong female characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Jolley</span> Australian writer

Monica Elizabeth Jolley AO was an English-born Australian writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s and forged an illustrious literary career there. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels, four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well-known writers such as Tim Winton among her students at Curtin University.

Christine is a 1917 novel written by Elizabeth von Arnim using the pen-name Alice Cholmondeley. It is the only novel von Arnim wrote under that name. It is written in the style of a compilation of letters from Christine, an English girl studying in Germany, to her mother in Britain. It covers the period of May–August 1914. In the letters Christine is a witness to the mood in Germany leading up World War I. The book was initially marketed as non-fiction.

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim is a 1921 novel based on the author's experiences during her disastrous second marriage, to Frank Russell. It is a frightening analysis of the naivety of a young woman, as she falls into the power of a pathologically narcissistic husband. In outline, this utterly unromantic novel anticipates Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Naive Lucy Entwhistle is swept into marriage by a widower, Everard Wemyss. His mansion, "The Willows", is pervaded by the spectre of his dead wife Vera, who Lucy gradually comes to suspect committed suicide rather than endure being married to Wemyss. The story is a black vision of a young wife who gradually begins to understand that her husband will accept nothing less than total intellectual and emotional servitude. Many of von Arnim's other books, including the Enchanted April, are written with verve, humour and a delight in the romantic: Vera is closer to a nightmare.

Gabrielle Carey was an Australian writer who co-wrote the teen novel, Puberty Blues with Kathy Lette. This novel was the first teenage novel published in Australia that was written by teenagers. Carey became a senior lecturer in the Creative Writing program at the University of Technology Sydney, studying James Joyce and Randolph Stow.

Annie Sophie Cory (1 October 1868 – 2 August 1952) was a British author of popular, racy, exotic New Woman novels under the pseudonyms Victoria Cross(e), Vivian Cory and V.C. Griffin.

<i>The Young Visiters</i> 1919 novel by Daisy Ashford

The Young Visiters or Mister Salteena's Plan is a 1919 novel by English writer Daisy Ashford (1881–1972). She wrote it when she was nine years old and part of its appeal lies in its juvenile innocence, and its unconventional grammar and spelling. It was reprinted 18 times in its first year alone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Singer Rowe</span> English poet and writer, 1674–1737

Elizabeth Singer Rowe was an English poet, essayist and fiction writer called "the ornament of her sex and age" and the "Heavenly Singer". She was among 18th-century England's most widely read authors. She wrote mainly religious poetry, but her best-known work, Friendship in Death (1728), is a Jansenist miscellany of imaginary letters from the dead to the living. Despite a posthumous reputation as a pious, bereaved recluse, Rowe corresponded widely and was involved in local concerns at Frome in her native Somerset. She remained popular into the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic and in translation. Though little read today, scholars have called her stylistically and thematically radical for her time.

Persephone Books is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. The catalogue includes fiction and non-fiction. Most books have a grey dustjacket and endpaper using a contemporaneous design, with a matching bookmark.

Mal Lewis Jones is a British children's author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germaine Greer</span> Australian writer and public intellectual (born 1939)

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and feminist, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rzędziny</span> Village in West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland

Rzędziny is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Dobra, within Police County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-western Poland, close to the German border. It lies approximately 6 kilometres (4 mi) north-west of Dobra, 16 km (10 mi) west of Police, and 21 km (13 mi) north-west of the regional capital Szczecin.

Adeline Georgiana Isabel Kingscote was an English novelist, the author of over sixty works including The Woman Who Wouldn't in 1895. After her marriage to Colonel Howard Kingscote, most of her novels were published under the name Mrs Howard Kingscote.

Elizabeth Ryves was an Irish author, poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and translator.

Dorothea Ann Fairbridge referred as Dora Fairbridge was a South African author and co-founder of the Guild of Loyal Women.

Mary, Lady Cheke was an English courtier, poet, and epigrammatist. She served as lady of the privy chamber to Elizabeth I.

References

  1. Robin Lane Fox (25 July 2015) Thorn amid the roses, in Financial Times, p. 20
  2. 1 2 3 4 Maddison, Isobel (2012) 'A Second Flowering' Archived 19 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine , pp.2-5. Katherine Mansfield Society. (published in the London Library Magazine, Issue 15, Spring 2012). Retrieved 18 July 2020
  3. 1 2 Kiek, Miranda (8 November 2011) Elizabeth von Arnim: The forgotten feminist who’s flowering again in The Independent. Retrieved 19 July 2020
  4. Sully, R. (2012) British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860-1914, p. 120. New York: Springer. Retrieved 20 July 2020 (Google Books)
  5. Römhild, Juliane (2014) Femininity and Authorship in the Novels of Elizabeth von Arnim: At Her Most Radiant Moment, p. 24. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   978-1-61147-704-7
  6. Elizabeth von Arnim Society. Lost in Translation. Nassenheide Revisited. Retrieved 21 July 2020
  7. BBC Sounds. Elizabeth and her German Garden. Retrieved 12 August 2020