It is said to be semi-autobiographical, for the author was from the upper classes, having married a Prussian aristocrat, and the story is dotted with references to high society types and the German bourgeois elite. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals but out there blessings crowd round me at every step-it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover. The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house. It was published in 1898 and charts a year in the life of the first person narrator’s plans to create a garden on her husband’s family estate in Pomerania. (I have a small review of it here.)Įlizabeth and her German Garden was her debut novel. Fiction – Kindle edition Vintage 132 pages 2013.Įlizabeth von Arnim, the Australian-born British writer, is probably best known for her delightful novel The Enchanted April, first published in 1922, which is about a disparate group of women who holiday together in an Italian villa.
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