Elizabeth Bowen

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Standard Name: Bowen, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Nickname: Bitha
EB published ten novels, seventy-nine short stories, a history of her Anglo-Irish family, and a large body of critical and other nonfictional writing. Her novels and short stories blend romance (the perils of innocence, and its loss, are favourite themes) with comedy and satire, and sometimes with hints of the occult. She was well known and widely read during her life, which occupied about three-quarters of the twentieth century. Eudora Welty claimed that EBwrote with originality, bounty, vigor, style, beauty up to the last.
Lassner, Phyllis. Elizabeth Bowen. Twayne.
173
Hoogland, Renée C. Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing. New York University Press.
2
Lassner, Phyllis. Elizabeth Bowen. Twayne.
157-60
Black and white head-and-shoulders photograph of Elizabeth Bowen seen in profile, with her head slightly turned. She is wearing a dark, high-collared jacket with a polka-dotted scarf around her neck; her hair, dark with a white streak, is pulled back in a bun, and she is wearing dark lipstick.
Black-and-white closeup portrait photograph of Elizabeth Bowen, 1949.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Travel Carson McCullers
The couple travelled to France together in 1946, and spent the winter and most of 1947 in Paris, with a side trip to Rome. CMC loved visiting new places both within and beyond...
Travel Lady Cynthia Asquith
Her old age included travel: three visits to Elizabeth Bowen in Ireland and one to Tolstoy 's estate of Yasnaya Polyana in Russia (with two days in Moscow and one in Leningrad) in connection...
Travel Eudora Welty
She visited Mexico as a young woman, and during the early 1950s a Guggenheim Fellowship enabled her to travel to Europe. She spent time in Dublin and stayed with Elizabeth Bowen . In the 70s...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eudora Welty
Those reviewed include Margery Allingham Carter , Sylvia Townsend Warner , Virginia Woolf , Rose Macaulay , Colette , Isak Dinesen , Elizabeth Bowen , Katherine Anne Porter , and EW 's close friend Ken Millar
Textual Production Susan Hill
The anthology of British women writers she published in 1990 with Michael Joseph as The Parchment Moon: An Anthology of Modern Women's Short Stories was reprinted the following year as The Penguin Book of Modern...
Textual Production Harold Pinter
In 1989 Pinter adapted for television Elizabeth Bowen 's novel The Heat of the Day, 1949, about wartime intrigue and betrayal. His version addresses the corrosive effect of fascism on human relationships.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Textual Production Sylvia Plath
SP was a student guest editor for Mademoiselle magazine, for which she interviewed Elizabeth Bowen .
Hayman, Ronald. The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath. Heinemann.
51-2
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Biography. Simon and Schuster.
97
Textual Production Elizabeth Taylor
ET felt strongly about the advantages of men over women as writers, especially over mothers. I don't think anything enrages me so much as seeing in famous men's autobiographies photographs of their studies, libraries, quiet...
Textual Production Elizabeth Taylor
ET 's list of favourite writers proves that her tastes were catholic and that she valued artistry, but says little about influences. Elizabeth Bowen was a writer who, for her, could do no wrong.
Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen.
102
Textual Production Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich through Jane Austen , Emily and Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
Textual Production Anne Ridler
AR published a biography of her own old headmistress: Olive Willis and Downe House , An Adventure in Education, with a foreword by Elizabeth Bowen .
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
80: 358
Ridler, Anne. Olive Willis and Downe House. John Murray.
1-5
Textual Production Sarah Waters
She carried out as much research as available sources permitted into lesbian lives in England of the 1940s, and spent four years working on this novel (as compared with one year for her first). She...
Textual Production Margery Lawrence
ML 's ghost stories have been frequently anthologised. They appear in, for instance, Fifty Strangest Stories Ever Told (1937), The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century (1987), and Vampire Stories (1993).
Clute, John, and John Grant, editors. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. St Martin’s Press.
under Lawrence, Margery
Textual Production Lady Cynthia Asquith
Her ten anthologies edited during the 1920s (some of them under pseudonyms such as Leonard Gray) had some significance for the writing of that decade, since they incorporated contributions from, for instance, Marghanita Laski
Textual Production Henry Green
HG 's rather small band of admirers (who have included Elizabeth Bowen and Eudora Welty ) have always felt him to be seriously underestimated.

Timeline

1907: Educationalist Olive Willis founded a school...

Building item

1907

Educationalist Olive Willis founded a school for girls at Downe House in Kent, formerly occupied by Charles Darwin . Downe House School began with one pupil, five teachers, and no financial backing.

: The second number of Orion. A Miscellany...

Writing climate item

Autumn1945

The second number of Orion. A Miscellany appeared: Rosamond Lehmann was one of the editors, along with C. Day Lewis and Edwin Muir .

March 1949: Elizabeth Bowen's feature on 1918 was broadcast...

Women writers item

March 1949

Elizabeth Bowen 's feature on 1918 was broadcast on the BBC 's Third Programme series A Year I Remember.

9 December 2006-17 July 2007: The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted...

Writing climate item

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Bowen, Elizabeth. A Day in the Dark and Other Stories. Jonathan Cape.
Bowen, Elizabeth. A Time in Rome. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bowen, Elizabeth. A World of Love. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Afterthought: Pieces about Writing. Longmans, 1962.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Ann Lee’s and Other Stories. Sidgwick and Jackson.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Anthony Trollope: A New Judgement. Oxford University Press, 1946.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Bowen’s Court. Longmans, Green.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Collected Impressions. Longmans, Green.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Encounters. Sidgwick and Jackson.
Bowen, Elizabeth. English Novelists. William Collins, 1942.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Eva Trout; or, Changing Scenes. Alfred A. Knopf.
Brown, Spencer Curtis, and Elizabeth Bowen. “Foreword”. Pictures and Conversations, Alfred A. Knopf, 1975, p. vii - xlii.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Friends and Relations. Constable and Company.
Wilson, Angus, and Elizabeth Bowen. “Introduction”. The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen, Alfred A. Knopf, 1981, pp. 7-11.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Irish Stories. Poolbeg Press.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Joining Charles and Other Stories. Constable and Company.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Look at All Those Roses. Victor Gollancz.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Nativity Play: A Christmas Musical. Dramatic Publishing Company, 1974.
Bowen, Elizabeth. “Notes on Writing a Novel”. Orion: A Miscellany, edited by Rosamond Lehmann et al., Nicholson and Watson, 1945.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Pictures and Conversations. Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Selected Stories. Maurice Fridberg, 1946.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Seven Winters. The Cuala Press, 1942.
Bowen, Elizabeth. “The Art of Bergotte”. Marcel Proust, 1871-1922: A Centenary Volume, edited by Peter Quennell, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Cat Jumps and Other Stories. Victor Gollancz.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.