Monthly Archives: November 2013

[Jennifer Walker, the author of this post, has just published “Elizabeth of the German Garden – A Literary Journey”]

THE CARAVANERS, by the author of “Elizabeth and her German Garden” (now known as Elizabeth von Arnim), first published in 1909 by Smith & Elder.

When Mary Beauchamp married the Count von Arnim in 1891, she had no idea that her newly-acquired German nationality would divide her life and her family for generations to come.  She had been swept off her feet by the widowed Prussian Count, some fifteen years her senior, finding at last that she was valued by him as a musically gifted and intelligent young woman.  For, on their engagement, the Count von Arnim-Schlagenthin took her straight to Bayreuth where Mary could perform Bach on the organ in the presence of Cosima Wagner.  But maybe the Count got more than her bargained for.  Mary was gifted, not only in music, but also in words, and it was by means of her writing that she managed to escape from the life proscribed for her; that of the wife of a member of the Prussian aristocracy in the latter years of the nineteenth century.

Writing as ‘Elizabeth’, she immediately established a literary reputation with her first best-selling novel, Elizabeth and her German Garden (published anonymously in 1898).  Continue reading →