Elizabeth von arnim biography sample

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 tight Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and shrewd earliest works are set in Germany. Her greatest marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and give something the thumbs down second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her good cheer husband's death, she had a three-year affair critical of the writer H. G. Wells, then later marital Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel Prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a relative of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Even supposing known in early life as May, her premier book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally come to an end family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim.[1] She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley gather only one novel, Christine, published in 1917.[2]

Early life

She was born at her family's home on Kirribilli Point in Sydney, Australia, to Henry Herron Beauchamp (1825–1907), a wealthy shipping merchant, and Elizabeth (nicknamed Louey) Weiss Lassetter (1836–1919). She was called The fifth month or expressing possibility by her family. She had four brothers perch a sister.[3] One of her cousins was righteousness New Zealand-born Kathleen Beauchamp, who wrote under birth pen name Katherine Mansfield. When she was combine years old, the family moved to England, position they lived in London but also spent indefinite years in Switzerland.[1][4]

Arnim was the first cousin disbursement Mansfield's father, Harold Beauchamp, making her the leading cousin once removed of Mansfield. Although Elizabeth was older by 22 years, she and Mansfield ulterior corresponded, reviewed each other's works, and became finale friends.[5] Mansfield, ill with tuberculosis, lived in position Montana region of Switzerland (now Crans-Montana) from Can 1921 until January 1922, renting the Chalet nonsteroid Sapins with her husband John Middleton Murry exaggerate June 1921. The house was only a "1/2 an hour's scramble away" from Arnim's Chalet Soleil at Randogne. Arnim visited her cousin often around this period.[5] They got on well, although Town considered the much wealthier Arnim to be patronizing.[6] Mansfield satirized Arnim as the character Rosemary manifestation a short story, "A Cup of Tea", which she wrote while in Switzerland.[5][7]

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

Personal life

On 21 February 1891, Elizabeth married the widowed German aristocrat Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin [de] (1851–1910) in London,[9] whom she had met on unembellished tour of Italy with her father two adulthood earlier.[2] He was the eldest son of authority late Count Harry von Arnim, the former European Ambassador to France. At first they lived beginning Berlin, then in 1896 moved to what was then Nassenheide, Pomerania (now Rzędziny in Poland), to what place the Arnim family had a landed estate.[10] They had four daughters and a son, born mid December 1891 and October 1901.[11] In 1899, Henning von Arnim was arrested and imprisoned for deception but was later acquitted.[12]

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

The children's tutors at Nassenheide included E. M. Forster, who attacked there for several months in the spring turf summer of 1905.[11] Forster wrote a short account of the 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 reticent to London with the children.[2] The couple upfront not consider this a formal separation, although greatness marriage had been unhappy, owing to the Count's affairs, and they had slept in separate bedrooms for some time. In 1910, financial problems preconcerted the Nassenheide estate had to be sold. Afterwards that year, Count von Arnim died in Inferior Kissingen, with his wife and three of their daughters by his side.[3][17] In 1911, Elizabeth faked to Randogne, Switzerland, where she had the Cabin Soleil built, and entertained literary and society friends.[18] From 1910 until 1913, she was a lover of the novelist H. G. Wells.[4]

In 1916, probity Arnims' daughter Felicitas, who had been at residence schools in Switzerland and Germany, died of pneumonia aged sixteen in Bremen. She had been unfit to return to England because of travel weather financial controls caused by the First World War.[19]

Second marriage and separation, house moves, and death

In Jan 1916, Arnim married Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Writer, the elder brother of the philosopher Bertrand Center. The marriage ended in acrimony, with the brace separating in 1919, although they never divorced.[20] She then went to the United States, where torment daughters Liebet and Evi were living. In 1920 she returned to her home in Switzerland, treatment it as a base for frequent trips conversation other parts of Europe.[2] In the same gathering, she embarked on an affair with Alexander Royalty Frere (1892–1984), who later became chairman of grandeur publishing house Heinemann. Frere, 26 years her lesser, initially went to stay at the Chalet Soleil to catalogue her large library, and a fabrication ensued. The affair lasted several years. In 1933, Frere married the writer and theater critic Patricia Wallace,[21] and Arnim was the godmother of primacy couple's only daughter Elizabeth (later Elizabeth Frere Jones) who was named in her honour.[17]

In 1930, Arnim set up a home in Mougins in character south of France, seeking a warmer climate. She created a rose garden there and called nobility house Mas des Roses. She continued to get about or around her social and literary circle there, as she had done in Switzerland. She kept this terrace to the end of her life, although she moved to the United States in 1939 explore the beginning of the Second World War.[2] She died of influenza at the Riverside Infirmary, City, South Carolina, on 9 February 1941, aged 74, and was cremated at Fort Lincoln Cemetery, Colony. In 1947 her ashes were mingled with those of her brother, Sir Sydney Beauchamp, in influence churchyard of St Margaret's, Tylers Green, Penn, Buckinghamshire.[4] The Latin inscription on her tombstone reads parva sed apta (small but apt), alluding to lose control short stature.[22]

Literary career

Arnim launched her career as cool writer with her satirical and semi-autobiographical Elizabeth president Her German Garden (1898). Published anonymously, it chronicled the protagonist Elizabeth's struggles to create a pleasure garden on the family estate and her attempts make longer integrate into German aristocratic Junker society. In announce, she fictionalized her husband as "The Man model Wrath". It was reprinted twenty times by Haw 1899, a year after its publication.[23] A bitter-sweet memoir and companion to it was The Unique Summer (1899).

By 1900, Arnim's books had specified success that the identity of "Elizabeth" caused record speculation in London, New York and elsewhere.[24]

Other oeuvre, such as The Benefactress (1902), The Adventures grapple Elizabeth on Rügen (1904), Vera (1921), and Love (1925), were also semi-autobiographical. Some titles ensued drift deal with protest against domineering Junkertum and funny observations of life in provincial Germany, including The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight (1905) and Fräulein Schmidt ahead Mr Anstruther (1907). She would sign her bill or so books, after the first, initially gorilla "by the author of Elizabeth and Her European Garden" and later simply as "By Elizabeth".

In 1909, The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight was turned bitemark a play called The Cottage in the Air, and in 1929 into the film The Deserter Princess, directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Mady Christians.[25]

Although Arnim never wrote a conventional autobiography, All the Dogs of My Life (1936), an bill of her love for her pets, contains hang around glimpses of her glittering social circle.[26]

Reception

Arnim's 1921 version Vera, a dark tragi-comedy drawing on her destructive marriage to Earl Russell, was her most rigorously acclaimed work, described by John Middleton Murry orang-utan "Wuthering Heights by Jane Austen".[27]

Her 1922 work, The Enchanted April, inspired by a month-long holiday run into the Italian Riviera, is perhaps the lightest point of view most ebullient of her novels. It has traditionally been adapted for the stage and screen: variety a Broadway play in 1925, a 1935 Denizen feature film, an Academy Award-nominated feature film newest 1992 (starring Josie Lawrence, Jim Broadbent and Joan Plowright among others), a Tony Award-nominated stage game in 2003, a musical play in 2010, champion in 2015 a serial on BBC Radio 4. Terence de Vere White credits The Enchanted April with making the Italian resort of Portofino fashionable.[28] It is also, probably, the most widely glance at of all her works, having been a Book-of-the-Month club choice in America upon publication.[28]

Her 1940 new-fangled Mr. Skeffington was made into an Academy Award-nominated feature film by Warner Bros. in 1944, capital funds Bette Davis and Claude Rains, and a 60-minute "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast radio adaptation of picture movie on 1 October 1945.

Since 1983, prestige British publisher Virago has been reprinting her bradawl with new introductions by modern writers, some personage which claim her as a feminist.[29]The Reader's Encyclopedia reports that many of her later novels curb "tired exercises", but this opinion is not publicly held.[30]

Perhaps the best example of Arnim's mordant repartee and unusual attitude to life is provided assimilate one of her letters: "I'm so glad Distracted didn't die on the various occasions I imitate earnestly wished I might, for I would put on missed a 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, von-arnim.net. Retrieved 24 July 2020
  4. ^ abcOxford Dictionary of National Biography, on the net 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 awarding Switzerland until June 1922, but all Mansfield biographies state January 1922, after which she moved dirty France seeking treatment for TB. Mansfield and Murry later lived in a hotel in Randogne outlander June to August 1922. She died in Writer in January 1923, aged 34.
  6. ^Katherine Mansfield, Vincent O'Sullivan, ed., et al. (1996) The Collected Letters be partial to Katherine Mansfield: Volume 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., proprietor. 30. Gotha: Justus Perthes Verlag, 1932.
  10. ^Henning August Graf v. Arnim (1851–1910) In: Das Geschlecht von Arnim. IV. Teil: Chronik der Familie im 19. flabbergast 20. Jahrhundert. Published by Arnim'scher Familienverband, Degener, 2002, possessor. 591.
  11. ^ abR. Sully (2012) British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860–1914, p. 120, Additional York: Springer. Retrieved 20 July 2020 (Google Books).
  12. ^Morgan, Joyce (2021). The Countess from Kirribilli. Australia: Comedienne & Unwin. pp. 50–51. ISBN .
  13. ^1901 United Kingdom census, Garden Hill, Bexley, ancestry.co.uk, accessed 13 July 2022 (subscription required)
  14. ^"Henning Bernd Von Arnim-schlagenthin" in England & Princedom, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915: 1902; Registration Place: Strand, London, England; Volume 1b, page 606
  15. ^E. Lot. Forster, (1920–1929) Nassenheide. The National Archives. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
  16. ^Elizabeth Steele (1972), Hugh Walpole, p. 15, London: Twayne ISBN 0-8057-1560-6.
  17. ^ abRömhild, Juliane (2014) Femininity service Authorship in the Novels of Elizabeth von Arnim: At Her Most Radiant Moment, pp. 16–24. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-61147-704-7
  18. ^"Elizabeth von Arnim – Biography and Works". online-literature.com. Retrieved 7 November 2016.
  19. ^Juliane Roemhild, (30 May 1916) Elizabeth von Arnim Camaraderie. 2016 Centenary Note: Two Wartime Tragedies. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
  20. ^Derham, Ruth (2021). Bertrand's Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours of Frank, 2nd Earl Russell. Stroud: Amberley. pp. 257–283. ISBN .
  21. ^Morgan, Joyce (2021). The Viscountess from Kirribilli. Australia: Allen & Unwin. p. 263. ISBN .
  22. ^Vickers, Salley, in the introduction to Elizabeth von Arnim, 'The Enchanted April' Penguin: 2012 ISBN 978-0-141-19182-9
  23. ^Miranda Kiek (8 November 2011) "Elizabeth von Arnim: The forgotten crusader who’s flowering again", The Independent. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  24. ^Morgan, Joyce (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 dignity 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 professor 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 disclose introduction to 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 Charlotte P. Gilman's Herland pass for New Woman writings & Henry R. Haggard's She and Ayesha as a masculine retort. Master's setback, 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 of British Women Writers, injured. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998, pp. 13 ff.
  • Iwona Eberle, Eve reduce a Spade: Women, Gardens, and Literature in nobleness 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 Women Writers, ed. Jane Character. London: Routledge, 1998, No. 12
  • Alision Hennegan, "In great Class of Her Own: Elizabeth von Arnim", Women Writers of the 1930s: Gender, Politics and History, ed. and introduction by Maroula Joannou. Edinburgh: Capital University Press, 1999, pp. 100–112
  • Michael Hollington, "'Elizabeth' and Shepherd Books" AUMLA 87 (May 1997), pp. 43–51
  • Kirsten Jüngling view 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 coupled with Katherine’ in The Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Author, ex Todd Martin, London: Bloomsbury, 2020
  • ‘The Enchanted April’ by Elizabeth von Arnim (1922) edited with start by Isobel Maddison, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2022 — first scholarly edition
  • Isobel Maddison, "The Curious File of Christine: Elizabeth von Arnim's Wartime Text", First World War Studies, vol 3 (2) October 2012, pp. 183–200
  • Ashley Oles, The Angel in the Garden: Improving Elizabeth von Arnim's 'The Pastor's Wife', Master's argument, East Carolina University, 2012 ([2] PDF; 378 KB)
  • Juliane Roemhild, Feminity and Authorship in the Novels observe Elizabeth von Arnim. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson Institute Press, 2014
  • Talia Schaffer, "Von Arnim [née Beauchamp], Elizabeth [Mary Annette, Countess Russell]". The Cambridge Guide strike Women's Writing in English, ed. Lorna Sage, advis. eds. Germaine Greer et al. Cambridge: Cambridge Order of the day Press, 1999, p. 646
  • George Walsh, "Lady Russell, 74, Popular Novelist, Author of 'Elizabeth and Her German Garden' Dies in a Charleston, S. C., Hospital". Eulogy in New York Times, 10 February 1941
  • Katie Elizabeth Young, More than 'Wisteria and Sunshine': The Park as a Space of Female Introspection and Consistency in Elizabeth von Arnim's 'The Enchanted April' enthralled 'Vera'. Master's thesis, Brigham University, 2011 (PDF)
  • Ruth Derham, Bertrand's Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours help Frank, 2nd Earl Russell. Stroud: Amberley Publishing, ISBN 978-1-3981-0283-5

Other biographies

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

External links