5 h 28 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 5 h 28 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a neglected garden offers more freedom than a house full of company?
Elizabeth leaves Berlin for her husband's family estate in Pomerania and falls in love with its neglected garden. In diary entries that follow the seasons from spring to spring, she seeks time outdoors with her plants, her books and her children. But her wish to be left alone meets resistance.
Her husband, the Man of Wrath, regards her gardening with indulgence and impatience. Workers have firm ideas about what is proper, while visitors expect meals, conversation and constant company. Drawing on her own life, Elizabeth von Arnim gives this struggle for solitude a voice full of dry humour, tenderness and stubborn resolve.
What you’ll discover
- A garden worth defending Watch a neglected patch of earth become the refuge Elizabeth wants to make her own.
- Company with a cost Meet guests whose demands test a hostess who would rather be among her plants.
- A sharp diary voice Enjoy Elizabeth's casual, direct observations, where a friendly smile often carries a pointed edge.
- Children among the flowers Spend time with the April, May and June Babies, watched with fond amusement.
- Freedom in quiet choices Explore a woman's determination to choose her own company despite the expectations around her.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy gardens, country seasons, witty narrators and women who claim their own time. It suits anyone who treasures a quiet corner, a shelf of books and a good laugh at society.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A neglected garden becomes her kingdom of heaven
- A beginner learns gardening through cheerful mistakes
- Solitude is a choice, whatever the neighbours say
- Three little girls and a husband called the Man of Wrath
- A November pilgrimage takes her back to childhood
- Childhood memories, comic and tender, fill the old garden
- Winter shows the lives of the people around her
- Christmas guests Irais and Minora keep the wit flowing
- Plans for flowers brighten the winter days
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Elizabeth and Her German Garden in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Elizabeth and Her German Garden
by Elizabeth von Arnim · 1898
A woman hides behind a bush to dance in the frost, and calls her overgrown German estate her kingdom of heaven.
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In short
What would you do if you found a whole kingdom sitting empty while you wasted five years in a city flat? Elizabeth von Arnim answers in this year-long garden diary, set on a sandy north German estate.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A neglected garden becomes her kingdom of heaven
Elizabeth spends the first five years of her marriage in a city flat, healthy and miserable. All that time the estate stands empty in the north German plain, an old gabled house that was once a convent. Weeds grow to the door, birds and squirrels rule the garden, and snakes slip into the empty rooms.
One March day she goes down for the opening of a village school and wanders into the bare garden. The smell of wet earth brings back her childhood, and she feels the five wasted years drop away like a cloak. She vows herself to nature on the spot and has been happy ever since.
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What is Elizabeth and Her German Garden about?
It follows one year in the life of Elizabeth, who moves to a neglected estate in north Germany and finds happiness in making a garden. Her diary covers seasons, children, guests, neighbours and memories of childhood.
Is Elizabeth and Her German Garden a true story?
It takes the form of Elizabeth's personal diary, mixing garden observations, family scenes and memories. The diary itself does not establish how closely those scenes follow the author's life.
Who is the Man of Wrath?
He is Elizabeth's husband, a landowner who is practical, dry and amused. She gives him that nickname, and his speeches and quiet disapproval of her gardening give the book much of its humour.
The author
Elizabeth von Arnim
1866–1941 · British-Australian novelist
Elizabeth von Arnim was an Australian-born British novelist celebrated for her wry, sunlit comedies of manners — most famously The Enchanted April, the story of four women transformed by a month in an Italian castle.
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