Complete and unabridged, with 100 full-page plates by Vincent van Gogh, Telemaco Signorini and Jacob Maris. Four Englishwomen who barely know each other answer a newspaper advertisement for a small medieval castle in Italy and take it for the month of April. What the wisteria does to them is the whole plot. Von Arnim wrote the book after renting such a castle at Portofino herself, and it sold so well that she built a house in the south of France with the proceeds. A hundred plates of Italian light by Fattori, De Nittis and their contemporaries, from sunset seascapes to the streets of Florence, match the sunstruck mood of von Arnim's castle idyll.