Australian writer. Mary Annette Beauchamp was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the daughter of Henry Herron Beauchamp and Elizabeth Weiss Lassetter. Her father's brother was the grandfather of Katherine Mansfield (nee Beauchamp), the New Zealand writer of short stories. In 1891, May, as she was known to her family, married, in London, Count Henning August von Arnim, a Prussian landowner fifteen years her senior, whom she had met in Italy. The couple lived for five years in Berlin, then moved to Nassenheide, the family estate in Pomerania. This was the setting for her first book, "Elizabeth and her German Garden" (1898), which was published anonymously. Although the Count appears in the book as "The Man of Wrath", the marriage appears to have been a very happy one. In 1908, however, they were forced by debt to move to England, with their four daughters and one son; and, two years after that, the Count died. His widow continued to live in England, France and Switzerland. In 1916, she became the third wife of the second Earl Russell, but this marriage was not such a happy one, and the pair soon separated. Earl Russell died in 1931 and was succeeded to the title by his brother Bertrand, the philosopher. The Countess went on to write twenty more books, all of which were published either anonymously, or credited as being 'By the author of "Elizabeth and her German Garden."' The best-known of these are: "The Enchanted April" (1926), which was filmed in 1935 and again in 1994; and her final novel, "Mr. Skeffington" (1940) which was filmed in 1940 with Bette Davis and Claude Rains. Although "Elizabeth" died in Charleston, South Carolina, her ashes were brought back to Buckinghamshire in England. Her epitaph, "Parva sed apta", may be translated as "Small but appropriate", and is taken from the inscription which Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) had carved on his house in Ferrara.