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.
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...
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...
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...
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
Monica Dickens
Persephone
's webside quotes two excellent reviews from the date of first publication—one from John Betjeman
and one from Elizabeth Bowen
.
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...
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
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
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
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.
5: 303-4 and 303n1
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...
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
Rosamond Lehmann
Elizabeth Bowen
published an appreciative review of this novel in The New Statesman and Nation on 11 July 1936.
Jonathan Yardley
, reviewing for the Washington Post, stressed O'Brien's brilliance and her nationality. If what you're looking for is a map of Ireland, the fiction of Edna O'Brien will do just fine. She...
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
