Matthew Barber
Playwright

Matthew Barber is a native of Los Angeles. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and worked in the San Francisco area doing publicity and marketing for a number of theatres. He also wrote as the Arts Editor for the San Francisco Independent before returning to Los Angeles. His first play, Enchanted April, was produced at the Hartford Stage, and subsequently on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre, where it was nominated for several Tony Awards, including Best Play, and won the John Gassner Awards for Outstanding New American Play.

Elizabeth von Arnim
Author

Mary Annette Beauchamp was born in Australia in 1866. Her books were published anonymously, during the early part of her career, as her husband, a German Count, did not think writing a suitable occupation for his wife. She would later refer to him as the `Man of Wrath'. Their circle of friends and colleagues included Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm, Hugh Walpole, E. M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield, her cousin.

Writing was a refuge for Elizabeth. Her first novel, Elizabeth's German Garden, was so well received that it was reprinted 21 times in its first year of release. The Enchanted April was written in 1922, four years after the Great War had ended.

After her husband's death, Arnim met H.G. Wells, with whom she had a three-year affair, but later married Francis Earl Russell, Bertrand Russell's brother: yet another nobleman and yet another unhappy marriage.

She died in 1941 from complications of influenza. A magnolia tree shelters her grave. Her marker stone reads: "Mary Annette, Countess Russell, "Elizabeth", Died February 9th 1941, and the epitaph reads: "Parva sed apta" or "Small but appropriate".

The Agony Column:
A regular feature of the front page of the London Times that contained various items of humour, curiosity...and travel.

Madame DuBarry and Madame Pompadour:
Mistresses of Louis XV

John Keats (1795-1821):
Possibly the greatest of the late Romantic Poets, he lived, for a time, in Hampstead. He died of consumption at the age of 25.

Carlyle, Tennyson, Arnold:
Famous poets of the Victorian age.

Mezzago:
A northern Italian town that is land locked. Barber probably chose the town for its name rather than its location. The play takes place somewhere near La Spezia, a town on the Mediterranean coast.

Box Hill:
A large hill, by English standards, located between London and Brighton. It is a favourite place for sledding in the winter.

Hampstead:
A northern suburb of London. It would have been approximately one hour by tube, and up to three hours by horse drawn omnibus in 1922.