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
Literary responses Margery Allingham
This novel was scorned by crime reviewers but praised for imagination and dramatic power by such discriminating critics as Elizabeth Bowen .
Martin, Richard. Ink in Her Blood: The Life and Crime Fiction of Margery Allingham. UMI Research Press.
178
Paul Reynolds , MA 's US agent, wrote, I found it difficult...
Literary responses Margery Allingham
Early critics of MA 's work saw her as a young revitaliser of the detective form, along with Nicholas Blake and Michael Innes. Later she was linked with the slightly older Dorothy Sayers and...
Friends, Associates Lady Cynthia Asquith
Cynthia was also a friend of Viola Meynell and of Enid Bagnold , whose Sussex homes were close to that of the Asquiths during the Second World War. Thirkell, as well as Lawrence, Bagnold, and...
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...
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
Literary responses Pat Barker
Reviewer Lara Feigel found that PB 's allusions to actual, historical people (Paul sharing sentiments, his place of work, the circumstances of his falling in love, with Graham Greene ; Elinor owing something to Elizabeth Bowen
Textual Features Sybille Bedford
Reviewer Pamela Petro notes the importance in SB 's works of her own distinctly worldly voice, whose deliberately knowing, clever, and aristocratic qualities are likely on occasion to irk more modern sensibilities.
Petro, Pamela. “A traveler’s tales”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
xx
, No. 10-11, p. 35.
35
David Leavitt
Friends, Associates Stella Benson
Back in London after various summer travels, SB met Eddie Marsh , Rebecca West , and Elizabeth Bowen .
Grant, Joy. Stella Benson: A Biography. Macmillan.
251
Textual Features Marjorie Bowen
MB credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson 's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson 's Miriam and...
Intertextuality and Influence Anita Brookner
Its male protagonist—still unusual for Brookner—is an academic, parent of a small daughter. His wife leaves him during the course of the story: though he idealises women, he does not achieve a successful relationship with...
Friends, Associates Bryher
The flat became a gathering place for friends including the Sitwells (Bryher grew especially close to Edith and Osbert ), Elizabeth Bowen , and Ivy Compton-Burnett .
Schaffner, Perdita. “Keeper of the Flame”. H.D., Woman and Poet, edited by Michael King, National Poetry Foundation, pp. 27-33.
32
Bryher,. The Days of Mars. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
18
While in London, Bryher increased the...
Literary responses Joanna Cannan
These books were praised by a whole roster of other women novelists: Elizabeth Bowen , Phyllis Bentley , and Pamela Hansford Johnson . Bowen observed of the first that there was much more to this...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Bowen , in her laudatory review, likened the icy sharpness of ICB 's dialogue to the sound of glass being swept up one of these London mornings after a blitz.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
160
ICB received a...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Of this novel ICB wrote, I have never had such superficial reviews.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
190
They did, however, praise the book, especially in the case of reviewers who were also novelists, like Elizabeth Bowen , Pamela Hansford Johnson
death Charles Darwin
CD , naturalist, died at his estate of Downe in Kent, which became a girls' boarding-school in 1907 and is now a museum.
Elizabeth Bowen , who was a girl at the school, was...

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.