Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Bowen
-
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.
Elizabeth Bowen
, always an admirer of AT
, wrote that if the social historian of the future does not refer to this writer and her novels, he would not know his business. Sales in...
Literary responses
Angela Thirkell
AT
never over-estimated her own talent. She wrote that she and her fictional alter-ego, Laura Morland, each write the same book each year with unfailing regularity, and called her own work not very good books...
Dedications
Elizabeth Taylor
ET
published her ninth novel, The Soul of Kindness. She dedicated it to Elizabeth Bowen
, using the latter's married name of Elizabeth Cameron to indicate that this was a personal, not only a literary, relationship.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
81n3
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
350
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Taylor
ET
wrote that she liked routine and was always disconcerted when I am asked for my life story, for nothing sensational, thank heavens, has ever happened.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
139
She had a passion for modern painting, and...
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.
44
She was lucky in that Ivy Compton-Burnett
(who was a generation older than she was, and notoriously difficult) and...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
At Mrs. Lippincote's set the tone for reception of ET
by attracting very mixed reviews. She treasured praise from L. P. Hartley
, Richard Church
(who was reminded of Woolf
's Mrs Dalloway), and...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
Like ET
's first book, this was praised by distinguished but not unanimous voices: Elizabeth Bowen
found an exciting distinction about every page, and Rosamond Lehmann
noted the stripped, piercing feminine wit and called ET
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
Reviews of A Game of Hide and Seek included high praise from Marghanita Laski
and Elizabeth Bowen
(some consolation to ET
for her problems with her US publisher), but also carping which she found deeply...
Reception
Elizabeth Taylor
Brigid Brophy
wrote that she valued very highly indeed the considered and considerable despair at the heart of this novel.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
85
From her dedicatee, Elizabeth Bowen
, ET
received with a letter praising the book's...
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
Anthologization
Muriel Spark
This came at a time when she was submitting her work (almost entirely poetry) in large quantity and having it rejected. She submitted this story as Aquarius: real names were not revealed until the...
Textual Features
Vita Sackville-West
The letters VSW
exchanged with her husband were absolutely crucial to the creation and the sustenance of their relationship: they expressed such closeness by letter that it almost took the place of sexual or literal...
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
Education
Anne Ridler
Downe House had been founded at Charles Darwin
's old home by Olive Willis
, a remarkable woman who was still headmistress, who exercised an important influence on AR
, and whose biography Ridler later...
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. 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.
