Fiction Books

The European Renaissance never happened. The Ottomans were not stopped at the gates of Vienna. Ferdinand and Isabella failed in their attempt to defeat the Moors. Imagine a world turned upside down. Northern Europe is the basket case. The Middle East is the center of the developed and "civilized"...

'Beauty; beauty. What was the good of beauty, once it was over? It left nothing behind it but acid regrets, and no heart at all to start fresh.' Approaching the watershed of her fiftieth birthday, Fanny, having long ago divorced Mr Skeffington and dismissed him from her thoughts for many years, is...

First published in 1904, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen is a travel journal written in the same style as the author's other autobiographical works Elizabeth and Her German Garden and The Solitary Summer. Elizabeth's a goal is to ride her coach around Rügen, Germany's largest island and a...

I read In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim in the place where it is set: the mountains of Switzerland. I hadn’t realized at the time that it was set in Switzerland – I was reading it on my e-reader so there was no jacket blurb to remind me – but it was wonderful to begin the book on my...

This enchanting novel tells the story of the love affair between Rose-Marie Schmidt and Roger Anstruther. A determined young woman of twenty-five, Rose-Marie is considered a spinster by the inhabitants of the small German town of Jena where she lives with her father, the Professor. To their homes...

Enchanted April (1992) is a film adaptation of Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel, The Enchanted April. The film was directed by Mike Newell. The novel was previously adapted as a Broadway play by Kane Campbell in 1925, and as an RKO Radio film in 1935. A new, Tony Award-nominated stage adaptation...

I was delighted by The Pastor’s Wife by Elizabeth von Arnim, the second book I read as part of Rachel and Carolyn‘s Virago Reading Week. In the hands of any other writer, anyone who lacks von Arnim’s light touch and gift for clever humor, this would have been a tiresome tragedy about a...

I think I will always remember The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim as the book that made me want to get an e-reader. Just knowing it was out there and available for free was too tempting. A humorous fairy tale-like story from my beloved Elizabeth von Arnim? I had to...

The Solitary Summer is a partially autobiographical novel first published in 1899. It’s an account of a summer spent in the country, away from the social world in which a woman of Elizabeth Von Arnim’s social stance was supposed to move. It’s also a companion to Von Arnim’s more famous...

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim is a black comedy based on her disastrous second marriage to Earl Russell: a mordant analysis of the romantic delusions through which wives acquiesce in husbands' tyrannies. In outline the story of this utterly unromantic novel anticipates DuMaurier's Rebecca. Naive...