Elizabeth's work is published in modern editions by Virago
and other publishers. Among these are: "Love", "The Enchanted April",
"Caravaners", "Christopher and Columbus", "The Pastor's Wife", "Mr.
Skeffington", "The Solitary Summer", and "Elizabeth's Adventures in
Rugen". Also published by Virago is her non-autobiography "All the Dogs
of My Life"--as the title suggests, it is the story not of her life, but
of the lives of the many dogs she owned; though of course it does touch
upon her own experiences.
In the centennial year of this book's first publication, I hope that its
availability through Project Gutenberg will stir some renewed interest
in Elizabeth and her delightful work. She is, I would venture, my
favorite author; and I hope that soon she will be one of your favorites.
R. McGowan San Jose, April 11 1998.
The first page of the book contains two musical phrases, marked in the
text below between square brackets [].
ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN
May 7th.--I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late afternoon
loveliness, much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to
look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago
in a cold shower. Two owls are perched near me, and are carrying on a
long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales.
The gentleman owl says [[musical notes occur here in the printed text]],
and she answers from her tree a little way off, [[musical notes]],
beautifully assenting to and completing her lord's remark, as becomes
a properly constructed German she-owl. They say the same thing over and
over again so emphatically that I think it must be something nasty about
me; but I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of
owls.
This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house,
much less in the garden, for twenty-five years, and it is such a
pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did
not, deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have
belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the
world seems chiefly composed. Noseless too, though it does not sound
pretty; but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent
of the wet earth and young leaves.
I am always happy (out of doors be it understood, for indoors there
are servants and furniture) but in quite different ways, and my spring
happiness bears no
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