It is with a heavy heart that I have just turned the final page of Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson. This heaviness has nothing at all to do with the contents of the book – it is simply a result of the unavoidable fact that I have now read all 5 of Eva Ibbotson’s historical romances, and will never again experience the utter joy of reading one of them for the first time.
I first discovered Eva Ibbotson by way of Booktuber Lucy Powrie (lucythereader) during the first months of the pandemic in 2020. Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of Lucy’s channel, and have found several new beloved classics and historical fiction novels thanks to her recommendations. When I heard her talk about Eva Ibbotson’s romantic, culturally rich and comforting historical fiction books, then, I knew I had to give them a try. And so, over the past three years, I’ve had the pleasure of discovering the wonder of these novels for myself.
Eva Ibbotson is most widely known as a children’s author – in particular, perhaps, for the novel Journey to the River Sea, which won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize in the UK in 2001. In this post, though, I want to discuss her historical romances for adults, which were published in the 1980s and 1990s. The five novels in question are: The Secret Countess (1981), Magic Flutes (1982), A Company of Swans (1985), The Morning Gift (1993) and A Song for Summer (1997) (there’s technically also her short story collection A Glove Shop in Vienna and the novel Madensky Square, but these both have quite different vibes, so I’m sticking to the romances here).
With settings ranging from WWII Britain to 1910s South America, these books seem at first glance to be vastly different – but they each have several core elements in common, the most prominent of which is classical music. Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925, where she lived until she and her family were forced to flee to England in 1933 to escape the Nazis’ persecution of Jewish people. Although she only lived a short while in Vienna, it’s clear that the city’s love for music had already permeated her soul by the time she left. Ballet and opera are central to the plot in a couple of the novels – but even when classical music isn’t taking centre stage, the prose is peppered with musical references in which Ibbotson’s clear love of the art form shines through.
Another common element between the books is the romantic relationships themselves. The heroes are always very handsome and strong, and the heroines very beautiful and good (verging on the angelic at some points), while the baddies are often laughably extreme cartoon villains. There’s never any doubt that the villains will be vanquished just in time for the hero and heroine’s happily-ever-after – but that’s exactly why I love these books. Ibbotson’s prose has a familiar, fairytale-like quality, with long, elegant sentences that wrap themselves around you in a comforting embrace. Sometimes you just need to know that everything will work out okay in the end – and few authors pull that off with more style and wit than Ibbotson.
By now you will hopefully have an idea of whether Ibbotson’s historical romances might be something you’re interested in. But if you do decide to pick one of them up, where should you begin?
As these novels are all standalones, there’s no one best reading order – but I’m going to give a brief overview of each of the novels which might provide you with some idea of which one appeals to you the most.
The Secret Countess
Setting: 1910s Russia and England
Published: 10th May 1981
Pages: 368
Recommended for fans of: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
1 sentence summary: Penniless Russian countess Anna Grazinsky flees her home country after the revolution and finds work as a housemaid at an English country manor, where she struggles to hide her identity from her new employer, the handsome young Earl of Westerholme.
Magic Flutes
Setting: 1920s Austria
Published: 1st January 1982
Pages: 384
Recommended for fans of: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
1 sentence summary: Tessa (otherwise known as the Princess of Pfaffenstein) juggles her secret job as a wardrobe mistress at a Vienna opera company with the complications of her family’s recent descent into poverty (including the sale of her crumbling castle to English foundling-turned-millionaire Guy Farne).
A Company of Swans
Setting: 1910s Cambridge/South America
Published: 1st July 1985
Pages: 416
Recommended for fans of: Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
1 sentence summary: Bored with life in Cambridge, Harriet Morton runs away with a ballet troupe on a tour of the Amazon, where she finds excitement, adventure – and possibly love, in the form of mysterious, music-loving British exile Rom Verney.
The Morning Gift
Setting: 1930s Vienna/WWII England
Published: 1st January 1993
Pages: 528
Recommended for fans of: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
1 sentence summary: Palaeontology professor Quin Somerville offers Ruth Berger a secret marriage of convenience to help her escape the Nazis’ persecution of Jews in Vienna – but the secret becomes rather more difficult to keep when Ruth enrols as a student on his course at Thameside University.
A Song for Summer
Setting: 1930s London/Austrian Alps
Published: 7th September 1997
Pages: 448
Recommended for fans of: The Sound of Music
1 sentence summary: Ellen Carr horrifies her suffragette aunts when she leaves London to work as a housekeeper at Hallendorf, an experimental school in the Austrian Alps featuring wild children, unconventional teachers, and a handsome, brooding gardener called Marek Tarnowsky.
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