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.
Where Michael Ackland
has recently seen fantasy, omission, and transformation (with valuable light shed on HHR
's attitudes and imaginative life),
Ackland, Michael. Henry Handel Richardson: A Life. Cambridge University Press.
2
Elizabeth Bowen
, reviewing the book on its first appearance, judged very differently...
Textual Features
Mary Renault
Lesbianism had been the subject of novels in the 1920s and 30s. Virginia Woolf
's Mrs. Dalloway and Elizabeth Bowen
's The Hotel had both been criticised (the latter severely) for sympathetic treatments of emotional...
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.
186
Textual Production
Sylvia Plath
SP
was a student guest editor for Mademoiselle magazine, for which she interviewed Elizabeth Bowen
.
Hayman, Ronald. The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath. Heinemann.
51-2
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Biography. Simon and Schuster.
97
Textual Production
Harold Pinter
In 1989 Pinter adapted for television Elizabeth Bowen
's novel The Heat of the Day, 1949, about wartime intrigue and betrayal. His version addresses the corrosive effect of fascism on human relationships.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Friends, Associates
Julia O'Faolain
Living in different countries, JOF
has moved in different literary circles, not all Irish or English. In Florence she and her husband were welcomed into the circle of the cosmopolitan writer Violet Trefusis
at Villa...
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...
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
Family and Intimate relationships
Iris Murdoch
Bayley (who was six years younger than Murdoch) appeared to her as an escape from her painful, dominated relationship with Elias Canetti
.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
374
He later held one of Oxford's few Chairs as Thomas Warton...
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.
The couple travelled to France together in 1946, and spent the winter and most of 1947 in Paris, with a side trip to Rome. CMC
loved visiting new places both within and beyond...
