Elizabeth von arnim biography meaning

Elizabeth von Arnim

Australian-born English writer, 1866–1941

Elizabeth von Arnim (31 August 1866 – 9 February 1941), born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist. Born display Australia, she married a German noblewoman, and her earliest works are demonstrate in Germany. Her first marriage feeling her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and torment second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. Fend for her first husband's death, she abstruse a three-year affair with the scribe H. G. Wells, then later husbandly Frank Russell, elder brother of depiction Nobel Prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Uranologist. She was a cousin of loftiness New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Despite the fact that known in early life as Possibly will, her first book introduced her journey readers as Elizabeth, which she one day became to friends and finally around family. Her writings are ascribed resume Elizabeth von Arnim.[1] She used righteousness pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley for only give someone a jingle novel, Christine, published in 1917.[2]

Early life

She was born at her family's constituent on Kirribilli Point in Sydney, Land, to Henry Herron Beauchamp (1825–1907), practised wealthy shipping merchant, and Elizabeth (nicknamed Louey) Weiss Lassetter (1836–1919). She was called May by her family. She had four brothers and a sister.[3] One of her cousins was description New Zealand-born Kathleen Beauchamp, who wrote under the pen name Katherine Town. When she was three years all-round, the family moved to England, wheel they lived in London but further spent several years in Switzerland.[1][4]

Arnim was the first cousin of Mansfield's father confessor, Harold Beauchamp, making her the chief cousin once removed of Mansfield. Allowing Elizabeth was older by 22 period, she and Mansfield later corresponded, reviewed each other's works, and became lock friends.[5] Mansfield, ill with tuberculosis, momentary in the Montana region of Suisse (now Crans-Montana) from May 1921 imminent January 1922, renting the Chalet stilbesterol Sapins with her husband John Pamphleteer Murry from June 1921. The line was only a "1/2 an hour's scramble away" from Arnim's Chalet Soleil at Randogne. Arnim visited her relative often during this period.[5] They got on well, although Mansfield considered authority much wealthier Arnim to be patronizing.[6] Mansfield satirized Arnim as the insigne Rosemary in a short story, "A Cup of Tea", which she wrote while in Switzerland.[5][7]

Arnim studied at probity Royal College of Music, principally report the organ.[8]

Personal life

On 21 February 1891, Elizabeth married the widowed German duke Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin [de] (1851–1910) in London,[9] whom she had reduction on a tour of Italy expound her father two years earlier.[2] Type was the eldest son of say publicly late Count Harry von Arnim, integrity former German Ambassador to France. Affection first they lived in Berlin, bolster in 1896 moved to what was then Nassenheide, Pomerania (now Rzędziny boring Poland), where the Arnim family abstruse a landed estate.[10] They had brace daughters and a son, born halfway December 1891 and October 1901.[11] Creepy-crawly 1899, Henning von Arnim was nab and imprisoned for fraud but was later acquitted.[12]

At the time of integrity 1901 United Kingdom census, on 1 April 1901, Arnim was in England, staying with her uncle Henry Beauchamp at The Retreat, Bexley, without equilibrium of her children.[13] Her son Henning Bernd was born in London advance October 1902.[14]

The children's tutors at Nassenheide included E. M. Forster, who awkward there for several months in justness spring and summer of 1905.[11] Forster wrote a short memoir of picture months he spent there.[15] From Apr to July 1907 the writer Hugh Walpole was the children's tutor.[16]

In 1908, Elizabeth von Arnim moved to Writer with the children.[2] The couple blunt not consider this a formal detachment, although the marriage had been make sorry, owing to the Count's affairs, predominant they had slept in separate bedrooms for some time. In 1910, commercial problems meant the Nassenheide estate difficult to be sold. Later that period, Count von Arnim died in Bass Kissingen, with his wife and tierce of their daughters by his side.[3][17] In 1911, Elizabeth moved to Randogne, Switzerland, where she had the Hut Soleil built, and entertained literary tube society friends.[18] From 1910 until 1913, she was a mistress of goodness novelist H. G. Wells.[4]

In 1916, birth Arnims' daughter Felicitas, who had antiquated at boarding schools in Switzerland spell Germany, died of pneumonia aged xvi in Bremen. She had been unfit to return to England because delightful travel and financial controls caused through the First World War.[19]

Second marriage come first separation, house moves, and death

In Jan 1916, Arnim married Frank Russell, Ordinal Earl Russell, the elder brother wink the philosopher Bertrand Russell. The negotiation ended in acrimony, with the unite separating in 1919, although they not in any degree divorced.[20] She then went to ethics United States, where her daughters Liebet and Evi were living. In 1920 she returned to her home remove Switzerland, using it as a pattern for frequent trips to other attributes of Europe.[2] In the same day, she embarked on an affair debate Alexander Stuart Frere (1892–1984), who afterward became chairman of the publishing igloo Heinemann. Frere, 26 years her inferior, initially went to stay at justness Chalet Soleil to catalogue her big library, and a romance ensued. Justness affair lasted several years. In 1933, Frere married the writer and transient critic Patricia Wallace,[21] and Arnim was the godmother of the couple's single daughter Elizabeth (later Elizabeth Frere Jones) who was named in her honour.[17]

In 1930, Arnim set up a children's home in Mougins in the south good buy France, seeking a warmer climate. She created a rose garden there post called the house Mas des Roses. She continued to entertain her societal companionable and literary circle there, as she had done in Switzerland. She reserved this house to the end marvel at her life, although she moved limit the United States in 1939 decompose the beginning of the Second Universe War.[2] She died of influenza dubious the Riverside Infirmary, Charleston, South Carolina, on 9 February 1941, aged 74, and was cremated at Fort President Cemetery, Maryland. In 1947 her adornment were mingled with those of give someone the boot brother, Sir Sydney Beauchamp, in rendering churchyard of St Margaret's, Tylers Young, Penn, Buckinghamshire.[4] The Latin inscription seizure her tombstone reads parva sed apta (small but apt), alluding to restlessness short stature.[22]

Literary career

Arnim launched her growth as a writer with her nudie and semi-autobiographical Elizabeth and Her Germanic Garden (1898). Published anonymously, it chronicled the protagonist Elizabeth's struggles to make a garden on the family landed estate and her attempts to integrate be received German aristocratic Junker society. In perception, she fictionalized her husband as "The Man of Wrath". It was reprinted twenty times by May 1899, adroit year after its publication.[23] A bitter-sweet memoir and companion to it was The Solitary Summer (1899).

By 1900, Arnim's books had such success deviate the identity of "Elizabeth" caused open and close the eye speculation in London, New York abide elsewhere.[24]

Other works, such as The Benefactress (1902), The Adventures of Elizabeth pile on Rügen (1904), Vera (1921), and Love (1925), were also semi-autobiographical. Some decorations ensued that deal with protest contradict domineering Junkertum and witty observations waning life in provincial Germany, including The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight (1905) and Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907). She would sign her twenty or ergo books, after the first, initially translation "by the author of Elizabeth put forward Her German Garden" and later purely as "By Elizabeth".

In 1909, The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight was turned invest in a play called The Cottage pop in the Air, and in 1929 answer the film The Runaway Princess, forced by Anthony Asquith and starring Mady Christians.[25]

Although Arnim never wrote a orthodox autobiography, All the Dogs of Angry Life (1936), an account of prepare love for her pets, contains spend time at glimpses of her glittering social circle.[26]

Reception

Arnim's 1921 novel Vera, a dark tragi-comedy drawing on her disastrous marriage letter Earl Russell, was her most badly acclaimed work, described by John Pamphleteer Murry as "Wuthering Heights by Jane Austen".[27]

Her 1922 work, The Enchanted April, inspired by a month-long holiday hold forth the Italian Riviera, is perhaps probity lightest and most ebullient of safe novels. It has regularly been cut out for for the stage and screen: significance a Broadway play in 1925, spruce 1935 American feature film, an Institute Award-nominated feature film in 1992 (starring Josie Lawrence, Jim Broadbent and Joan Plowright among others), a Tony Award-nominated stage play in 2003, a sweet-sounding play in 2010, and in 2015 a serial on BBC Radio 4. Terence de Vere White credits The Enchanted April with making the European resort of Portofino fashionable.[28] It quite good also, probably, the most widely make of all her works, having bent a Book-of-the-Month club choice in U.s. upon publication.[28]

Her 1940 novel Mr. Skeffington was made into an Academy Award-nominated feature film by Warner Bros. bring into being 1944, starring Bette Davis and Claude Rains, and a 60-minute "Lux Tranny Theater" broadcast radio adaptation of high-mindedness movie on 1 October 1945.

Since 1983, the British publisher Virago has been reprinting her work with virgin introductions by modern writers, some pick up the tab which claim her as a feminist.[29]The Reader's Encyclopedia reports that many fence her later novels are "tired exercises", but this opinion is not about held.[30]

Perhaps the best example of Arnim's mordant wit and unusual attitude reach life is provided in one make out her letters: "I'm so glad Frenzied didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I potency, for I would have missed smashing lot of lovely weather."[31]

Select bibliography

Notes

  1. ^ abUsborne 1986, p. [page needed]
  2. ^ abcdeMaddison, Isobel (2016) Elizabeth von Arnim: Beyond the German Garden. Abingdon: Routledge.
  3. ^ abArnim, Jasper von (2003) Elizabeth von Arnim, Retrieved 24 July 2020
  4. ^ abcOxford Dictionary of National History, online edition (UK library card required): Arnim, Mary Annette [May] von. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
  5. ^ abcMaddison 2013, pp. 85–91This source incorrectly states that Mansfield was in Switzerland until June 1922, nevertheless all Mansfield biographies state January 1922, after which she moved to Writer seeking treatment for TB. Mansfield skull Murry later lived in a bed in Randogne from June to Venerable 1922. She died in France loaded January 1923, aged 34.
  6. ^Katherine Mansfield, Vincent O'Sullivan, ed., et al. (1996) The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Notebook Four: 1920–1921, pp. 249–250. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 20 July 2020 (Google Books)
  7. ^Katherine Mansfield, (2001) The Montana Stories London: Persephone Books.
  8. ^Isobel Maddison, Juliane Römhild, et al. (22 June 2017) "Reading Elizabeth von Arnim Today: An Overview", Women: A Cultural Review, Vol. 28, 2017, Issue 1–2. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
  9. ^Genealogische Handbuch des Adels., p. 30. Gotha: Justus Perthes Verlag, 1932.
  10. ^Henning Respected Graf v. Arnim (1851–1910) In: Das Geschlecht von Arnim. IV. Teil: Chronik der Familie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Published by Arnim'scher Familienverband, Degener, 2002, p. 591.
  11. ^ abR. Sully (2012) British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860–1914, p. 120, New York: Springer. Retrieved 20 July 2020 (Google Books).
  12. ^Morgan, Joyce (2021). The Countess suffer the loss of Kirribilli. Australia: Allen & Unwin. pp. 50–51. ISBN .
  13. ^1901 United Kingdom census, Park Structure, Bexley, , accessed 13 July 2022 (subscription required)
  14. ^"Henning Bernd Von Arnim-schlagenthin" splotch England & Wales, Civil Registration Opening Index, 1837-1915: 1902; Registration Place: Line, London, England; Volume 1b, page 606
  15. ^E. M. Forster, (1920–1929) Nassenheide. The Popular Archives. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
  16. ^Elizabeth Author (1972), Hugh Walpole, p. 15, London: Twayne ISBN 0-8057-1560-6.
  17. ^ abRömhild, Juliane (2014) Femininity and Authorship in the Novels become aware of Elizabeth von Arnim: At Her Pinnacle Radiant Moment, pp. 16–24. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-61147-704-7
  18. ^"Elizabeth von Arnim – Biography and Works". Retrieved 7 November 2016.
  19. ^Juliane Roemhild, (30 May 1916) Elizabeth von Arnim Society. 2016 Anniversary Note: Two Wartime Tragedies. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
  20. ^Derham, Ruth (2021). Bertrand's Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours dead weight Frank, 2nd Earl Russell. Stroud: Amberley. pp. 257–283. ISBN .
  21. ^Morgan, Joyce (2021). The Peep from Kirribilli. Australia: Allen & Unwin. p. 263. ISBN .
  22. ^Vickers, Salley, in the overture to Elizabeth von Arnim, 'The Happy April' Penguin: 2012 ISBN 978-0-141-19182-9
  23. ^Miranda Kiek (8 November 2011) "Elizabeth von Arnim: Position forgotten feminist who’s flowering again", The Independent. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  24. ^Morgan, Writer (2021). The Countess from Kirribilli. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. pp. 52–57. ISBN .
  25. ^Introduction, Elizabeth von Arnim, The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2016)
  26. ^Elizabeth von Arnim, All the Dogs of My Life, Virago: 2006 ISBN 978-1-84408-277-3
  27. ^Brown, Erica (2013). Comedy and the Feminine Middlebrow Novel: Elizabeth von Arnim and Elizabeth Taylor (1st ed.). London: Pickering & Chatto. ISBN .
  28. ^ abTerence De Vere White, Introduction to The Enchanted April, Virago: 1991 ISBN 978-0-86068-517-3
  29. ^Elizabeth von Arnim, Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther, Virago: 1983 ISBN 978-0-86068-317-9
  30. ^Bruce F. Murphy, ed., The Reader's Encyclopedia, 5th ed., Collins: 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-089016-2
  31. ^Letter to Maud Ritchie, quoted by Deborah Kellaway in introduction pick up The Solitary Summer, Virago: 1993 ISBN 1-85381-553-5

Sources

Further reading

  • Lisa Bekaert, An Analysis of Elizabeth von Arnim's The Benefactress and City P. Gilman's Herland as New Lady writings & Henry R. Haggard's She and Ayesha as a masculine retort. Master's thesis, Ghent University, 2009 ([1] PDF; 378 KB)
  • de Charms, Leslie: Elizabeth of the German Garden: A Biography – London: Heinemann, 1958 OCLC 848626
  • Amanda DeWees, "Elizabeth von Arnim". An Encyclopedia elder British Women Writers, ed. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998, pp. 13 ff.
  • Iwona Eberle, Eve with a Spade: Women, Gardens, and Literature in the Nineteenth Century. (Master's thesis, Zurich University, 2001). Munich: Grin, 2011, ISBN 978-3-640-84355-8
  • Kate Browder Heberlein, "Arnim, Elizabeth von". Dictionary of British Troop Writers, ed. Jane Todd. London: Routledge, 1998, No. 12
  • Alision Hennegan, "In calligraphic Class of Her Own: Elizabeth von Arnim", Women Writers of the 1930s: Gender, Politics and History, ed. favour introduction by Maroula Joannou. Edinburgh: Capital University Press, 1999, pp. 100–112
  • Michael Hollington, "'Elizabeth' and Her Books" AUMLA 87 (May 1997), pp. 43–51
  • Kirsten Jüngling and Brigitte Roßbeck, Elizabeth von Arnim; Eine Biographie. Frankfurt: Insel, 1996, ISBN 978-3-458-33540-5
  • Isobel Maddison, ‘Elizabeth von Arnim: ‘Beyond the German Garden,’ Routledge, 2013
  • Isobel Maddison, ‘Elizabeth and Katherine’ pin down The Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Author, ex Todd Martin, London: Bloomsbury, 2020
  • ‘The Enchanted April’ by Elizabeth von Arnim (1922) edited with introduction by Isobel Maddison, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2022 — first scholarly edition
  • Isobel Maddison, "The Curious Case of Christine: Elizabeth von Arnim's Wartime Text", First World Combat Studies, vol 3 (2) October 2012, pp. 183–200
  • Ashley Oles, The Angel in prestige Garden: Recovering Elizabeth von Arnim's 'The Pastor's Wife', Master's thesis, East Carolina University, 2012 ([2] PDF; 378 KB)
  • Juliane Roemhild, Feminity and Authorship in justness Novels of Elizabeth von Arnim. Virgin Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014
  • Talia Schaffer, "Von Arnim [née Beauchamp], Elizabeth [Mary Annette, Countess Russell]". The Metropolis Guide to Women's Writing in English, ed. Lorna Sage, advis. eds. Germaine Greer et al. Cambridge: Cambridge Habit Press, 1999, p. 646
  • George Walsh, "Lady Stargazer, 74, Famous Novelist, Author of 'Elizabeth and Her German Garden' Dies of the essence a Charleston, S. C., Hospital". Obit in New York Times, 10 Feb 1941
  • Katie Elizabeth Young, More than 'Wisteria and Sunshine': The Garden as trig Space of Female Introspection and Model in Elizabeth von Arnim's 'The Pleased April' and 'Vera'. Master's thesis, Brigham University, 2011 (PDF)
  • Ruth Derham, Bertrand's Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours be advisable for Frank, 2nd Earl Russell. Stroud: Amberley Publishing, ISBN 978-1-3981-0283-5

Other biographies

  • Joyce Morgan, The Peep from Kirribilli. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2021 ISBN 9781760875176
  • Carey, Gabrielle (2020). Only Interest Here: In Search of Elizabeth von Arnim. St Lucia, Qld.: University lay out Queensland Press.
  • Katie Roiphe, Uncommon Arrangements: Septet Portraits of Married Life in Writer Literary Circles 1910–1939. New York: Telephone Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-385-33937-7
  • Jennifer Walker, Elizabeth earthly the German Garden – A Studious Journey. Brighton: Book Guild, 2013 ISBN 978-1-84624-851-1

External links