The Enchanted April

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) was born Mary Annette Beauchamp to a prosperous English family living in Australia. The Beauchamps returned to England when "May" was still young, and she spent her formative years there. In 1891 she married Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a widower twice her age. The two settled on his family estate in Pomerania, where they raised five children and employed both E.M. Forster and Hugh Walpole as tutors. Von Arnim's first book, the autobiographical novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden, was an enormous success, and most of her twenty subsequent books were published under the pseudonym of "the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden." In 1912, following the Count's death, von Arnim set up house in Switzerland. There she became close to her cousin, the writer Katherine Mansfield, who was convalescing nearby, and began a romance with Francis, the second Earl Russell, (brother of Bertrand Russell) whom she married in 1916. The marriage quickly turned rancorous, but the Russells never divorced. At the start of World War II, von Arnim moved to the United States; she died in Charleston, South Carolina. »

Cathleen Schine is the author of seven novels, including Rameau's Niece, The Love Letter, She is Me, and the forthcoming The New Yorkers. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. »

By Elizabeth von Arnim
Introduction by Cathleen Schine

A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.

The women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don't anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete.

The Enchanted April was a best-seller in both England and the United States, where it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and set off a craze for tourism to Portofino. More recently, the novel has been the inspiration for a major film and a Broadway play.

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Reviews

A restful, funny, sumptuous, and invigorating vacation for the mind and soul.
— 500 Great Books By Women

A comedy of absolutely flawless mirth...a very beautiful...and touching book.
— Chris Morley

Extraordinarily well written...it is witty, human, often very beautiful.
— Punch

An expression of the propensity of people to be blind to the real secret of happiness...it showed how exquisitely men and women get upon each others' nerves and how they suffer from each others' egos.
— National Review

The Enchanted April sounds as if it would be an appallingly cloying cream puff of a fairy tale, but that would be to ignore that the author habitually kept a pot of lemon juice mixed with vinegar beside her ink-pot. With this bracing element there is additionally what can only be called a feast of flowers, hanging from every wall and pouring scent over the company.
— Times Literary Supplement

A pleasant...little story, with some neat phrasing and a genuine feeling for color and for beauty.
— The New York Times

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A Month in the Country
By J. L. Carr
Introduction by Michael Holroyd

In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church.

The Towers of Trebizond
By Rose Macaulay
Introduction by Jan Morris

Traveling overland from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, the narrator and her companions have a series of hilarious encounters with potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and an ever-recurring busload of Southern evangelists.

Italian Holiday Collection

The Enchanted April and Indian Summer

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $14.95
Price: $11.21 (25% off)

Apr 3, 2007
264 pages
ISBN: 1590172256
9781590172254
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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