The writer now known as Elizabeth von Arnim has not always been easy to define. We commonly refer to von Arnim using a composite name devised by Virago Press in 1983, but the writer herself chose to publish anonymously and pseudonymously over a career spanning 40 years and was personally known by various names over her lifetime, including Mary Annette Beauchamp, Countess von Arnim, and Countess Russell.
The Anglophone writer’s fiction is characterized by a remarkable heterogeneity of genres, modes, and national perspectives. She lived and/or wrote in Australia, England, Germany, Switzerland, France, and the United States. The time has come for a serious critical assessment of von Arnim’s work from formal, textual, cultural, and contextual perspectives.
Dr Jennifer Shepherd and Dr Noreen O’Connor invite submissions for a collection of essays exploring von Arnim’s identities, contexts, and literary achievements. The collection has received publishing interest from Clemson UP/Liverpool UP. Essays on the following topics are particularly welcome (though not restricted to):
- publishing history
- narrative technique
- reading practices
- literary, stage, and film adaptations
- music
- politics, including Fabianism
- travel writing
- transnationalism
- feminism
- class
- Victorian influences
- modernism
- genre
- marriage
- ecocriticism
Please send abstracts (300-400 words) and biographical details to Dr Jennifer Shepherd and Dr Noreen O’Connor at <jennifer.shepherd@open.ac.uk> by 01 June, 2021.
Invited essays of 6,000 words will be required by 01 November, 2021.
