Publisher's Synopsis
First published in 1921, Vera is a darkly comic story about Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss. Both have recently lost someone close to them as the first chapter opens. They meet and at once believe they have found a soul mate in each other. As their relationship progresses we come to understand more of each character's past. Most importantly we learn about Wemyss' late wife, Vera. What at first appears to be a different and quirky romance turns out to be an indictment of egoism and dominance in relationships.Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim is a 1921 novel based on her disastrous second marriage, to Frank Russell. It is a frightening analysis of the naivety of a young woman, as she falls into the power of a pathologically narcissistic husband. In outline, this utterly unromantic novel anticipates Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Naive Lucy Entwhistle is swept into marriage by a widower, Everard Wemyss. His mansion, "The Willows", is pervaded by the specter of his dead wife Vera, who Lucy gradually comes to suspect committed suicide rather than endure being married to Wemyss. The story is an extraordinarily black vision of a young wife who gradually begins to understand that her husband will accept nothing less than total intellectual and emotional servitude. Many of von Arnim's other books, including the wonderful Enchanted April, are written with verve, humor, and a delight in the romantic: Vera is closer to a nightmare.When The Times Literary Supplement published a bad review of Vera, her friend John Middleton Murry consoled her by saying that it was to be expected that the reviewers would not know what to make of a novel that sounded like Wuthering Heights written by Jane Austen. Comparisons with Austen were also made by Sydney Waterlow, Hugh Walpole, and Augustine Birrell.Von Arnim herself considered Vera her "high water mark".Elizabeth von Arnim (31 August 1866 - 9 February 1941), born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an Australian-born British novelist. By marriage she became Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and after her second marriage she was styled as Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. Although known in her early life as Mary, after the publication of her first book, she was known to her readers, eventually to her friends, and finally even to her family as Elizabeth and she is now invariably referred to as Elizabeth von Arnim. She also wrote under the pen name Alice Cholmondeley.BiographyShe was born at her family's holiday home in Kirribilli Point, Australia. When she was three years old, the family returned to England where she was raised. Her parents were Henry Herron Beauchamp (1825-1907), merchant, and Elizabeth (Louey) Weiss Lassetter (1836-1919). Arnim had four brothers, a sister, and a cousin from New Zealand, Kathleen Beauchamp, who later married John Middleton Murry and wrote under the pen name, Katherine Mansfield.In 1891, Elizabeth married Henning August, Graf von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Prussian aristocrat, whom she had met during an Italian tour with her father. They lived in Berlin and eventually moved to the countryside where, in Nassenheide, Pomerania (now in Poland), the Arnims had their family estate. The couple had five children, four daughters and a son. The children's tutors at Nassenheide included E. M. Forster and Hugh Walpole.In 1908, Arnim left Nassenheide to return to London. Count von Arnim died in 1910, and later that year she moved to Randogne, Switzerland, where she built the Chalet Soleil and entertained literary and society friends. From 1910 until 1913, she was a mistress of the novelist H.G. Wells.In 1916, she married Frank Russell, the second Earl Russell and elder brother of Bertrand Russell.
