
A devastating and hilarious comedy about an Edwardian caravan holiday in Kent
In the early years of the twentieth century, Baron Otto von Ottringel, a pompous and self-important major in the German army, is about to take a holiday abroad with his long-suffering second wife. His narrative of pained bewilderment at the bizarre behavior of the English people with whom he has chosen to spend a month in a convoy of horse-drawn holiday caravans is side-splittingly funny. We sympathize deeply with the lady whom he pursues in a platonic and very one-sided holiday affair, and even more with Baroness Edelgard, who discovers her own holiday freedoms, and becomes newly emancipated in her marriage, to the Baron's horror.
Reflecting frustration with and exasperated affection for German aristocratic society, The Caravaners reveals the lost world of European social networks and crusted assumptions that disappeared forever with the First World War.
Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley only for a novel, Christine, published in 1917. [Wikipedia]

A devastating and hilarious comedy about an Edwardian caravan holiday in Kent
In the early years of the twentieth century, Baron Otto von Ottringel, a pompous and self-important major in the German army, is about to take a holiday abroad with his long-suffering second wife. His narrative of pained bewilderment at the bizarre behavior of the English people with whom he has chosen to spend a month in a convoy of horse-drawn holiday caravans is side-splittingly funny. We sympathize deeply with the lady whom he pursues in a platonic and very one-sided holiday affair, and even more with Baroness Edelgard, who discovers her own holiday freedoms, and becomes newly emancipated in her marriage, to the Baron's horror.
Reflecting frustration with and exasperated affection for German aristocratic society, The Caravaners reveals the lost world of European social networks and crusted assumptions that disappeared forever with the First World War.
Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley only for a novel, Christine, published in 1917. [Wikipedia]