Elizabeth and Her German Garden

Elizabeth von Arnim’s first book reads like a year kept in a diary, though it is really a record of escape. Married to a Prussian count and installed on a remote estate in Pomerania, the narrator flees the formality of the household to spend her days among roses, borders, and seed catalogues. Her real subject is not horticulture but freedom: the small rebellions of a woman who would rather be alone with her flowers than preside over dinner parties. The tone is wry and self-mocking, with sharp asides about German bourgeois manners, her exasperating husband (whom she calls the Man of Wrath), and the impossibility of getting the gardeners to do as she asks. Published anonymously in 1898, it was an immediate success. This edition is free to read as a PDF and EPUB.