The Enchanted April

The Enchanted April is a novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim that portrays an escape to a pastoral enclave away from urbanization and the spread of new technologies. It is set in a small medieval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean and follows the journey of four unhappy women to San Salvatore, an extraordinarily aesthetic and enchanted location.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 14 April 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

To those who appreciate wistaria and sunshine, a small medieval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean is being let for the month of April, above a bay on the Italian Riviera. Four very different women—the disheveled and downtrodden Mrs. Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs. Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs. Fisher, and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester—are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur. The Enchanted April (1922) is a deceptive and timely novel immured in a post-war context, a period noted for its wistful and sometimes satiric writings. Von Arnim's novel is part of this oeuvre and portrays an escape to a carefully described pastoral enclave away from encroaching urbanization and the spread of new technologies, in an era when the Great War had left many emotionally and physically starved. The journey to San Salvatore by four unhappy women is an escape from stifling parochialism, constraining social and gendered expectations as well as stultifying insularity, but the evocation of an extraordinarily aesthetic and enchanted location suggests more than personal recuperation.

The journey to San Salvatore by four unhappy women is an escape from stifling parochialism, constraining social and gendered expectations as well as stultifying insularity, but the evocation of an extraordinarily aesthetic and enchanted location suggests more than personal recuperation. The Enchanted April (1922) is a deceptive and timely novel immured in a post-war context, a period noted for its wistful and sometimes satiric writings. Von Arnim's novel is part of this oeuvre and portrays an escape to a carefully described pastoral enclave away from encroaching urbanization and the spread of new technologies, in an era when the Great War had left many emotionally and physically starved. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur. The journey to San Salvatore by four unhappy women is an escape from stifling parochialism, constraining social and gendered expectations as well as stultifying insularity, but the evocation of an extraordinarily aesthetic and enchanted location suggests more than personal recuperation.

Weight: 194g
Dimension: 196 x 130 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198859093