Elizabeth and Her German Garden, Illustrated Edition 1900
 

I bought this in a lot at auction recently. No name on the cover or the
title page. But it quickly turned out that the book was written by
Elizabeth von Arnim, who had a very interesting life indeed.

She was born (1866) Mary Annette Beauchamp in Australia, to British
parents who, three years later, returned to England where she grew up.
In 1891 she married Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin and
moved to Naseenheide in Pomerania. They had five children, and among
the children's tutors were E. M. Forster and Hugh Walpole. Count Arnim
died in 1910, two years after they moved to London. Immediately, she
began a three year affair with H. G. Wells. In 1916, she married John
Francis Stanley Russell, 2nd Earl Russell, not as well known as his
younger brother Bertrand. She left him in 1919 and moved to Charleston,
South Carolina. Without divorcing Russell, she began a long affair with
a British publisher.

Her literary Career was stunning in her day, though mostly forgotten
now. Among other works, she wrote (1) The Enchanted April (1922), which
has been adapted for the stage five times and made into a movie twice,
most recently in 1991 with Miranda Richardson, Alfred Molina, Jim
Broadbent, Michael Kitchen and Joan Plowright; (2) Mr. Skeffington
(1940), which was made into a movie in 1944 with Bette Davis and Claude
Rains.

Quite a life for someone so unknown today.


Francis A. Miniter