Elizabeth von Arnim The Caravaners

Description

Baron von Ottringel’s narrative of pained bewilderment at the bizarre behaviour of the English people with whom he has chosen to spend a month in horse-drawn holiday caravans (they unaccountably cut the holiday short after only a week) is side-splittingly funny. We sympathise with the lady whom he pursues in a very one-sided holiday affair, and even more with Edelgard, the Baron’s long-suffering and much younger second wife, who discovers her own holiday freedoms, and becomes newly emancipated, to the Baron’s horror.

‘Elizabeth von Arnim’ was the pen-name of Mary Annette Beauchamp (1866-1941), an Australian-born British novelist and a cousin of Katherine Mansfield. Her much-loved Prussian husband, Count von Arnim, died a year after she published The Caravaners.

The novel reflects her frustration with and exasperated affection for German aristocratic society, and reveals the lost world of European social networks and crusted assumptions that disappeared forever with the First World War, only a few years after The Caravaners’ publication. It is also one of the funniest feminist novels ever written. The introduction is by the von Arnim scholar Juliane Roemhild.

Reviews

‘A hilarious tale of staycationing’ – The Times Summer Reading 2023

‘There is so much comedy here – the Baron shamed into performing menial tasks which he sees as being beneath him, problems with horses, mud, cultural differences galore. Elizabeth von Arnim has an eye for such absurdities and reproduces them gloriously.’ – a fine review from HeavenAli

‘Perhaps the greatest achievement of this wholly delightful book is the way our view of Otto is gradually modulated as the story proceeds. At first he appears simply like a buffoon and it’s only too easy to laugh at his ridiculous views and at his total inability to understand and interpret the feelings and actions of his fellow travellers. As time goes on, though, he seems increasingly pathetic, lost and confused. Alas, he has learned nothing from his week’s holiday.’ – from Harriet Devine

‘The Caravaners comes with an excellent introduction, and useful notes at the back. It’s an entertaining and extremely funny book, as well as being evidence of von Arnim’s incredible skill as a writer.’ – Shiny New Books, September 2019

‘It was a joy from start to finish. I would have read it in one sitting if life and time allowed but to be honest I would have missed a treat had I done so. This intelligent and deeply humorous book is one to be savoured.’ – Bookbound, still giggling.

‘The Caravaners by Elizabeth Von Arnim, first published in 1909, and which I had bought as a special offer from Handheld Press … I’m about a hundred pages in and delighted not only by the story and the writing, but by one of those serendipitous moments when you discover that the date on which you are reading is the exact date something happens in the book. It is August 2nd when the German Baron and his wife set off on what is proving to be an ill-fated but hilarious holiday, travelling by horse-drawn caravan around England, and so I’m feeling like a tag-along and I really can’t stop laughing.’ – Dove Grey Reader

‘a satire of the highest order … The Caravaners is a brilliantly-written novel, one that casts a sharply satirical eye over such subjects as misogyny, class differences, power dynamics in marriage and Anglo-German relations during the early 20th century. Plus, of course, the delights and follies of caravanning in the inclement British weather. I absolutely loved it.’ – JacquiWine’s Journal

Watch our video, in which we explain why we love this novel so much, and why it is funner than P G Wodehouse.

Watch a short reading from the novel by Juliane Roemhild.

Download and read our von Arnim biography