Grey cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available. 

•        Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

 Once a very popular book, its merit today is that it remains a charming jaunt into a different and slower time. 

Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a novel by the Australian-born writer Elizabeth von Arnim, first published in 1898. It was very popular and frequently reprinted during the early years of the 20th century.The book earned over £10,000 in the first year of publication, with 11 reprints during 1898; by May 1899, it had been reprinted 21 times.The book is the first in a series about the same character, “Elizabeth”. It is noteworthy for originally being published without a named author. Von Arnim insisted that she must remain anonymous because she claimed her husband, the German aristocrat Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, whom she satirises in the book, would have found it unacceptable for his wife to write commercial fiction. Although the book is semi-autobiographical, the novelist E.M. Forster, who lived at the von Arnim estate in 1905, working as a tutor to the family’s children, wrote that there was in fact not much of a garden. “‘The German Garden itself … did not make much impression.’ … ‘[The house] appeared to be surrounded by paddocks and shrubberies’ while ‘in the summer’, he notes, ‘some flowers – mainly pansies, tulips, roses [appeared] … and there were endless lupins … [that] the Count was drilling for agricultural purposes’. But, Forster adds, ‘there was nothing of a show’.”

Count von Arnim sold the estate in 1910 due to financial problems. The manor house was destroyed in a WWII British air raid on 6 January 1944.

NOTE: This is an original  book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. Note: Jack founded the Michelin Guide ‘Midsummer House’- Cambridge’s paramount restaurant. This dining experience is hidden amongst the grassy pastures and grazing cattle of Midsummer Common and perched on the banks of the River Cam.

In 2008, Jack was one of the co-founders of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, alongside other members of the Department, and acted as the Foundation’s Chair. The project’s original goals were modest: to build and distribute low-cost computers for prospective applicants to our Computer Science degree. Initially the project was a “success disaster”, as Jack would say, as demand far outstripped the low-scale manufacturing plans. Ultimately the Raspberry Pi became the UK’s most successful computer with more than 60 million sold to date. Jack was drawn to the educational possibilities of the Raspberry Pi, its potential uses in emerging economies and the way it could support self-directed learning.