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
Literary responses Olivia Manning
Growing Up was praised in print by Elizabeth Bowen and privately by C. P. Snow . The Times Literary Supplement found the stories distinguished for both their clarity and their good writng but marred by...
Literary responses Margery Allingham
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 Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ said this was her own favourite among her books.
“Elizabeth Jenkins”. The Telegraph, 6 Sept. 2010.
Elizabeth Bowen said that sitting up late reading it in bed left her (in an Irish colloquialism) lying stretched for dead.
qtd. in
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
140
The book roused...
Literary responses Olivia Manning
Some initial reviews were critical, but OM was delighted when Elizabeth Bowen referred to her masculine impersonality.
qtd. in
Braybrooke, Neville, and Isobel English. Olivia Manning: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
143
Five years later William Gerhardi wrote that she here represents war in a compass so narrowed...
Literary responses Henry Handel Richardson
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, 2004.
2
Elizabeth Bowen , reviewing the book on its first appearance, judged very differently...
Literary responses Katherine Mansfield
After Mansfield's death, Woolf wrote in her diary: it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won't read it.
qtd. in
Gunn, Kirsty. “How the Laundry Basket Squeaked”. London Review of Books, Vol.
35
, No. 7, 12 Apr. 2013, pp. 25-6.
25
KM appears in episodes in more than one novel by her friend...
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...

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