The four women of the story don’t know each other when the book starts. Aside from their unhappy marriages (and it’s really just boredom – there’s nothing more malicious than that), there is virtually no conflict! Just lovely descriptions of Italian countryside and blooming flowers and relaxing on various balconies and parapets. That’s it! That’s the book! Just four nice ladies who are kind of unhappy with their lives decide to go on vacation. This is the story of four British women in 1922 who rent an Italian villa for a month.

Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.The Enchanted April is the ultimate comfort read, to the point where I’m almost disappointed that I originally read it in the summertime rather than the middle of winter, because I love the idea of reading this book while huddled under blankets during a snowstorm. The journey to San Salvatore by four unhappy women is an escape from stifling parochialism, constraining social and gendered expectations as well as stultifying insularity, but the evocation of an extraordinarily aesthetic and 'enchanted' location suggests more than personal recuperation.ĪBOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe.

Von Arnim's novel is part of this oeuvre and portrays an escape to a carefully described pastoral enclave away from encroaching urbanisation and the spread of new technologies, in an era when the Great War had left many emotionally and physically starved. The Enchanted April (1922) is a deceptive and timely novel immured in a post-war context, a period noted for its wistful and sometimes satiric writings. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur. Small medieval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let For the month of April, above a bay on the Italian Riviera.'įour very different women-the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs Fisher, and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester-are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. 'To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.

The European Society of Cardiology Series.

Oxford Commentaries on International Law.

Enchanted april book