Elizabeth von Arnim

Elizabeth von Arnim (August 31st 1866 with Sydney, Australia - February 9th 1941 with Charleston, the United States) is an English novelist .

Its life

Cousin of the novelist Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth von Arnim, from her true name Mary “May” Annette Beauchamp, is born in Sydney, within an English family, of a father trading having made fortune in Australia. When it is three years old, the family regains England and settles with London.

Elizabeth is a brilliant pupil, in particular in history, but it is the music which it chooses by integrating the Royal Collège of Music .

At the end of its studies, it leaves to make a large turn through the Europe, in company of her father. In 1889, whereas they are in Italy, it meets the Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Prussian aristocrat , cousin of the romantic poet Achim von Arnim. She marries it in London one year later and they settle with Berlin.

Five years later, they move in the family field of her husband with Nassenheide, in Poméranie where Elizabeth discovers the joys of the life in the countryside. The couple now has five children (four girls and a boy) educated by tutors as famous as Edward Morgan Forster or Hugh Walpole.

Elizabeth then makes profitable the peace of this rural life to start to write. In 1898, it anonymously publishes its first work, Elizabeth and its German garden ( Elizabeth and Her German Garden ), kind of diary in which it entrusts its reflections on the roughness of this Germany of the north and its attempts at creation of a garden to English the . Since its publication, this small novel, republished more than twenty times, was a considerable success. It marked the career of its author besides in a final way because all the novels written thereafter will be always presented like those of the “author of Elizabeth and his German garden ”.

In 1908, financial problems oblige the family von Arnim to move in London where the Count dies two years later. Elizabeth remains in England during two more years before settling in Suisse. In its “Country cottage Sun”, it becomes the center of a fashionable life and maintains a noisy love affair with H.G. Wells.

In 1916, it marries the Count Francis Russell, grandson of Lord John Russell (who was Prime Minister for the Reine Victoria) and older brother of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Unfortunately, this marriage is a failure and they separate at the end of one year and divorce in 1919.

Elizabeth continues to write sharing its life between England, Switzerland and Mougins in the south of the France. When the Second world war bursts, it gains the United States where it dies in Charleston in 1941.

Its work

The work of Elizabeth von Arnim is very largely autobiographical. One finds in his novels his joys and his disappointments, his happiness and his loneliness, his love of nature but also a typically British sensitivity and a requirement.

Anecdotes

The majority of its novels were written under pseudonyms such as “Alice Cholmandeley”, the “author of Elizabeth and its German garden ” or simply “Elizabeth”.

Although very popular of alive sound, Elizabeth von Arnim thought that its notoriety would die out with it, a fact disputed by the success gained in particular by the adaptations of two of its novels to the cinema:

List its works

  • Elizabeth and its German garden ( Elizabeth and her German Garden , 1898)
  • the solitary Summer ( The Solitary Summer , 1899)
  • The April Baby' S Book off Tunes , 1900 (magazine by Kate Greenaway)
  • The Benefactress , 1901
  • Adventures of Elizabeth with Rügen ( The Adventures off Elizabeth in Rugen , 1904)
  • Princess Priscilla' S Fortnight , 1905
  • Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther , 1907
  • In the caravan ( The Caravaners , 1909)
  • Priscilla Runs Away , 1910 (play not published)
  • The Pastor' S Wife , 1914
  • Christine , 1917
  • Christopher and Colombus ( Christopher and Columbus , 1919)
  • In the Mountains , 1920
  • Vera , 1921
  • magic April ( The Enchanted April , 1922)
  • Coils , 1925
  • Introduction To Sally , 1926
  • Atonement , 1929
  • Father , 1931
  • Jasmine Farm , 1934
  • All dogs of my life ( All the Dogs off My Life , 1936)
  • Mr. Skeffington , 1940

Random links:Microtus oeconomus | Célimène Gaudieux | Mizuho-ku | Jabuka | Park Nonant-the-Pine | Fort_Covington,_New_York