The Enchanted April

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) was an Australian-born English novelist. Von Arnim’s father was a wealthy shipping merchant, and she had an affluent upbringing. She was the cousin of noted Modernist author Katherine Mansfield, best known for short stories such as The Doll’s House (1922), The Garden Party (1922), and Miss Brill (1920). Von Arnim moved to London with her family early in her childhood and grew up there and in Switzerland. She attended the Royal College of Music to study the organ before marrying Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a wealthy German aristocrat with whom she moved to Germany.

The couple had five children, whose tutor was the novelist E.M. Forster, best known for his novels A Passage to India (1924), A Room with a View (1908), Howard’s End (1910), and Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905). Von Arnim and her husband were not happily married, and upon his death in 1911, she and the children moved to London, where she hoped to have a fresh start. In 1916, von Arnim married Frank Russell, the brother of philosopher Bertrand Russell.