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 Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf , reading the typescript of this novel at the end of February 1941, judged it to be more vigorous and pulled together than most of her other books, to have more depth and...
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
VW met Elizabeth Bowen , beginning a friendship that would continue until the former's death.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
629
Health Virginia Woolf
But it is difficult to mark precisely when she moved to a depressed and then to a suicidal state. Elizabeth Bowen last visited VW on 13 and 14 February, and later recalled: I remember her...
Literary responses Ethel Wilson
The book was well received by reviewers at Punch and The Tatler. Noted novelist Elizabeth Bowen wrote that it was so remarkable as to convince me that its author should go a long way.
Stouck, David. Ethel Wilson: A Critical Biography. University of Toronto Press.
128,129
Literary responses Rebecca West
The Thinking Reed received high praise from contemporary reviewers, including Elizabeth Bowen and John Crowe Ransom .
Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton.
145
Literary responses Mary Wesley
Early praise for MW 's work came from such different writers as Marghanita Laski and Susan Hill . Other commentators likened her work to that of Rose Macaulay , Elizabeth Bowen , Barbara Pym ...
Dedications Eudora Welty
EW 's next collected volume, containing seven pieces, The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories, was dedicated to Elizabeth Bowen .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
New York Times. New York Times Company.
4
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
667
Friends, Associates Eudora Welty
EW 's friendship with her fellow Mississippian William Faulkner began from an impromptu postcard he sent her from Hollywood in 1943: Dear Welty: You are doing fine. You are doing all right. . ....
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...
Literary responses Eudora Welty
Elizabeth Bowen is quoted in the Times Literary Supplement praising this volume as great, tender, austere stuff, shot through from beginning to end with beauty. . . . In The Golden Apples Miss Welty would...
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 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...
Dedications Susan Tweedsmuir
ST published the third of her own novels, The Rainbow through the Rain, which she dedicated to Elizabeth Bowen .
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Friends, Associates Susan Tweedsmuir
ST made her own the friendship with Elizabeth Robins that had begun because Robins was a friend of her mother's. She was also close to playwright-producer Harley Granville-Barker and particularly to his second wife, the...
Textual Features Susan Tweedsmuir
The opening proper of this volume invokes with some trepidation George Sand 's statement that there is nothing more tedious than the dregs of an old régime.
Tweedsmuir, Susan. A Winter Bouquet. G. Duckworth.
20
Again the structure of the book is...

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.