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.
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
Intertextuality and Influence Edna O'Brien
EOB has named many women writers as important to her: she includes among these Jane Austen , Emily Dickinson , Elizabeth Bowen , Anna Akhmatova , Anita Brookner , and Margaret Atwood , adding: Every...
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...
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.
qtd. in
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
139
She had a passion for modern painting, and...
Literary responses Angela Thirkell
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 Mavis Gallant
On the subject of Gallant's first The New Yorker story, Madeline's Birthday, Mordecai Richler —signing his name as Mordy—wrote to Douglas M. Gibson to say i saw mavis's story in the new yorker. i'm...
Literary responses Hilary Mantel
HM already features in critical surveys of the modern British novel, such as that by Nick Rennison , 2004. A. S. Byatt discusses her (among writers of both sexes including predecessors Elizabeth Bowen and Muriel Spark
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...
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
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...
Literary responses Betty Miller
Her Times obituary might be regarded as damning her novels with faint praise. It called her essentially a feminine novelist—using the epithet with no derogatory connotation—applying her talent to sensitive explorations of feeling.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(27 November 1965): 10
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, 2003.
128,129
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 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, 1995.
145
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 Stella Gibbons
SG 's Cold Comfort Farm won the Prix Femina Vie-Heureuse, worth forty pounds (as Webb 's Precious Bane had done only seven years previously). Gibbons's award was presented in June 1934.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 303-4 and 303n1

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.