Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim is an 1898 novel. Although this is a novel, it follows the author’s life in she also was an English woman who married a German Count.

I love this comment from a review on Amazon UK from one of the reader reviewers: “Anyone who delights in communing with the earth in their own little corner of half-tamed nature, whilst blithely ignoring the pressures of family and day-to-day life, will find a kindred spirit in Elizabeth.”

Of course careful watchers of the wonderful “Downton Abbey” on PBS will recognize this title as the one Mr. Mosely presses on Anna as a pretext for talking with her. Of course any tie to Downton must be interesting and this book was a best seller in its day. Remember books could be bestsellers for decades in the pre-copyright era.

So let’s take a look inside:

Luckily I had sown two great patches of sweetpeas which made me very happy all the summer, and then there were some sunflowers and a few hollyhocks under the south windows, with Madonna lilies in between. But the lilies, after being transplanted, disappeared to my great dismay, for how was I to know it was the way of lilies? And the hollyhocks turned out to be rather ugly colours, so that my first summer was decorated and beautified solely by sweet-peas. At present we are only just beginning to breathe after the bustle of getting new beds and borders and paths made in time for this summer. The eleven beds round the sun-dial are filled with roses, but I see already that I have made mistakes with some. As I have not a living soul with whom to hold communion on this or indeed on any matter, my only way of learning is by making mistakes.

But it is not all gardens. One of her children insists on a Bible story:

I began about Adam and Eve, with an eye to future parsonic probings. The April baby’s eyes opened wider and wider, and her face grew redder and redder. I was surprised at the breathless interest she took in the story—the other two were tearing up tufts of grass and hardly listening. I had scarcely got to the angels with the flaming swords and announced that that was all, when she burst out, “Now I’ll tell about it. Once upon a time there was Adam and Eva, and they had plenty of clothes, and there was no snake, and lieber Gott wasn’t angry with them, and they could eat as many apples as they liked, and was happy for ever and ever—there now!”

I can see this would have been the sort of book read upstairs and downstairs.

Click here to get your copy of “Elizabeth and Her German Garden” by Elizabeth von Arnim >>>