Showing results by author "Elizabeth Von Arnim" in All Categories

It began in a women's club in London on a February afternoon. A discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed to "Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine..." lures four very different women away from the dismal British weather to San Salvatore, a castle high above a bay on the sunny Italian Riviera. There, the Mediterranean spirit stirs the souls of Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Wilkins, Lady Caroline Dester, and Mrs Fisher, and remarkable changes occur.

When her husband is suddenly killed in a car accident, the widowed Milly Bott is surprised to find that he has left her only a small fraction of his wealth, bequeathing the rest to a charity for fallen women, with the cryptic note that ‘my wife will know why’. From that moment she knows that her late husband must have known about her clandestine affair.

This is a journey of both escape and discovery for four exquisitely different women, a month of bliss and privacy for four weary souls. Their refuge on the Italian Riviera provides the perfect backdrop for a story about the search for spiritual harmony within and without.

Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a new wife, Jennifer, at 33, seizes the opportunity to lead an independent life. Quickly she secures the lease of Rose Cottage and turns her attention to her own interests. While Jennifer is desperate to experience life on her own terms within her reduced financial means, her neighbour, Alice, is pre-occupied with ensuring her position as head of her brother's household is never challenged.

Lucy Entwhistle's beloved father has just died; aged twenty-two she finds herself alone in the world. Leaning against her garden gate, dazed and unhappy, she is disturbed by the sudden appearance of the perspiring Mr Wemyss. This middle-aged man is also in mourning - for his wife Vera, who has died in mysterious circumstances. Before Lucy can collect herself, Mr Wemyss has taken charge: of the funeral arrangements, of her kind aunt Dot, but most of all of Lucy herself - body and soul.

"... Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer." Lottie and Rose belong to the same London women's club, but they don't know each other very well. They both see the same advertisement for a castle in Italy, which is available for rent for a month. For different reasons, these women want to get away from their husbands for a while and they put out an ad and find two more women in need of vacation. And so, the four vastly different women head to Italy.

Indoors are servants, meals, and furniture. There, too, is The Man of Wrath, her upright Teutonic husband, inspiring in Elizabeth a mixture of irritation, affection, and irreverence. But outside she can escape domestic routine, read favorite books, play with her three babies and garden to her heart's content. Through Elizabeth's eyes we watch the seasons, from May's "oasis of bird-cherries and greenery" to the time when "snow carpets her Pomeranian wilderness".

Four very different women, all wanting to escape cold and dreary London for different reasons, come together to share a month's holiday in an Italian medieval castle. There’s timid Lotty Wilkins, terrified of her domineering husband; sober and religious Rose Arbuthnot; rigid and judgemental Mrs Fisher; and the breathtakingly beautiful but disillusioned and unhappy Lady Caroline Dester. They are lured to the castle by the advertised 'wisteria and sunshine', but they end up finding there so much more than they had bargained for.

Brought to you by Penguin. The discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed 'To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine', offers a small medieval castle for rent, above a bay on the Italian Riviera. Four very different women - the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad...

gentle romance begins innocently enough in the stalls of a London theatre where Catherine is enjoying her ninth and Christopher his thirty-sixth visit to the same play. He is a magnificent young man with flame-coloured hair. She is the sweetest little thing in a hat. There is just one complication: Christopher is 25, while Catherine is just a little bit older. Flattered by the passionate attentions of youth, Catherine, with marriage and motherhood behind her, is at first circumspect, but finally succumbs to her lover's charms.

Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss, both recovering from recent unhappiness, meet and quickly fall in love. However, over their new-found bliss looms the spectre of Vera, Wemyss’s first wife who died in mysterious circumstances. After their wedding the couple return home and Lucy really does begin to be troubled by what happened to Vera. Considered a high-water mark by the author, the story is an extraordinarily black vision of a young wife who gradually begins to understand that her husband will accept nothing less than total intellectual and emotional servitude.

Two unhappily married women, Rose Arbuthnot and Lotty Wilkins, respond to an advertisement offering a month’s rental of a small medieval Italian castle. In order to defray the not inconsiderable cost of such a venture, two other ladies, Lady Caroline Dester and the formidable Miss Fisher, are invited to join them, and thus the four embark on their adventure. The ill-matched companions get off to a rocky start, but the delightful and spell-binding environment of the Italian Riviera unexpectedly brings them together.

The Enchanted April follows four dissimilar women in the 1920s England who leave their rainy, grey environments to go on holiday in Italy. Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins, who belong to the same ladies' club but have never spoken, become acquainted after reading a newspaper advertisement for a small medieval castle on the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April. They find some common ground in that both are struggling to make the best of unhappy marriages. They also reluctantly take on the waspish, elderly Mrs. Fisher and the stunning but aloof Lady Caroline Dester to defray ...

Four very different English ladies, strangers to one another, rent a villa for a month near Portofino. Here their lives and loves change as they fall under the spell of this magical place.

To Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. Small medieaval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the month of April. This small advertisement sparks something long dormant in the reluctant hearts of two downcast London women - the possibility of happiness.

The Caravaners, a comic novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, describes an Edwardian caravan holiday in the English county of Kent from the viewpoint of the pompous and self-important Baron Otto von Ottringel, a major in the German army.

Ingebor Bullivant, the put-upon daughter of the Bishop of Redchester, suddenly rebels and takes a week's tour to Lucerne. Constantly in the company of a ponderous German pastor, she is put into a quandary when he proposes marriage. Faced with her father's wrath on her return, she accepts Herr Dremmel with simple relief. But as a pastor's wife in East Prussia, she finds she has merely exchanged one set of rules for another...

Published in 1899, The Solitary Summer is a charming companion to von Arnim’s earlier novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden. As with its prequel, the novel is semi-autobiographical and in the form of a series of diary entries. The narrator decides to spend one summer alone in her country house far away from the demands and distractions of the world. She offers us a witty and lyrical account of a solitary summer, filled with reading and reflections on her beloved garden. However, her months removed from society turn out to be less solitary than planned.

Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther is a novella written by Elizabeth von Arnim, a British-German author known for her witty and insightful novels. Published in 1907, the story revolves around the correspondence between two main characters, Fräulein Rose-Marie Schmidt, a spinster in her late 30s, and Mr. Henry Anstruther, a kind and sympathetic stranger, as they navigate their lives and explore their feelings for each other.

Lured by the Mediterranean spring, the violet mountains, sweet-scented flowers, and an idyllic small Italian seaport, four truly diverse Englishwomen rent an Italian castle for the month of April. They gradually shed their public skins to discover a harmony each of them has longed for but none has known until now.