Elizabeth von Arnim

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) was born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Sydney, Australia, grew up in England and married a Prussian count, with whom she lived on his estate in Pomerania. Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898), a wry anonymous account of that life, was a huge success and gave her the name under which she wrote twenty more books, among them The Enchanted April, Vera and Mr Skeffington. Her children's tutors included E. M. Forster. Widowed in 1910, she had an affair with H. G. Wells and made a disastrous second marriage to Bertrand Russell's elder brother, which supplied the material for Vera. She was a cousin of Katherine Mansfield.