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.
qtd. in
Lassner, Phyllis. Elizabeth Bowen. Twayne, 1991.
173
Hoogland, Renée C. Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing. New York University Press, 1994.
2
Lassner, Phyllis. Elizabeth Bowen. Twayne, 1991.
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
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...
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...
Friends, Associates F. Tennyson Jesse
Gordon Place became the centre of an active female literary community, which included Elizabeth Bowen , Rose Macaulay , Virginia Woolf , Ivy Low (who was also a good friend of Viola Meynell ), Ivy Compton-Burnett
Friends, Associates Molly Keane
Molly's close friends included novelist Elizabeth Bowen and actress Peggy Ashcroft . Visiting the Perry family home at Woodrooff, she met John Perry , who later collaborated with her on plays, and Bobby Keane ...
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, 1996.
629
Friends, Associates Carson McCullers
Other friends who not of this group but who were important to CMC included several distinguished writers: Eudora Welty , Katherine Anne Porter , Tennessee Williams , Elizabeth Ames (director of the writers' community at...
Friends, Associates Barbara Pym
BP and Elizabeth Bowen met at the home of mutual friends in St John's Wood, London.
Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Editors Holt, Hazel and Hilary Pym, Macmillan, 1984.
186
Friends, Associates Margaret Kennedy
MK met and formed a writing friendship with fellow author Elizabeth Bowen .
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann, 1983.
90
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, 1990.
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Taylor
Friends said that ET was very shy, but cared very much for very few people.
Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen, 1986.
44
She was lucky in that Ivy Compton-Burnett (who was a generation older than she was, and notoriously difficult) and...
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, 1987.
251
Friends, Associates Lady Ottoline Morrell
LOM continued to entertain in London, hosting such guests as Ethel Smyth , Elizabeth Bowen , Stephen Spender , Max Beerbohm , Hope Mirrlees , Djuna Barnes , Charlie Chaplin , the novelist Henry Green
Friends, Associates Iris Murdoch
She met Brigid Brophy (another friend who was years tempestuously a lover) in 1954. This relationship survived several crises, when Brophy took offence at Murdoch's actions or expressed dislike for her writing. IM met Elizabeth Bowen
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, 1986, pp. 27-33.
32
Bryher,. The Days of Mars. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
18
While in London, Bryher increased the...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Penelope Lively
As controversy has been Henry's domain, reading has been Charlotte's. For ever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. Reading has taught her how sex...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Bowen, Elizabeth. The Death of the Heart. Victor Gollancz.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Demon Lover and Other Stories. Jonathan Cape.
Bowen, Elizabeth. “The Evolution of a Novelist”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2424, p. 395.
Bowen, Elizabeth, editor. The Faber Book of Modern Short Stories. Faber, 1937.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Good Tiger. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Hotel. Constable and Company.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The House in Paris. Victor Gollancz.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Last September. Constable and Company.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Last September. Collected Edition, Jonathan Cape, 1948.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Little Girls. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bowen, Elizabeth. “The Mulberry Tree”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 37-51.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Shelbourne. George G. Harrap and Company, 1951.
Bowen, Elizabeth. To the North. Victor Gollancz.