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.
Molly's close friends included novelist Elizabeth Bowen
and actress Peggy Ashcroft
. Visiting the Perry family home at Woodrooff, she met John Perry
, who later collaborated with her on plays, and Bobby Keane
...
Author summary
Molly Keane
MK
had two distinct phases in her writing career. Between 1926 and 1961 she wrote, under the pseudonym M. J. Farrell, eleven novels and four plays. After almost twenty years of silence, she published...
In 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, EJ
's father bought her a beautiful but shabby eight-roomed Georgian house in a street called Downshire Hill in Hampstead, where she lived...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jenkins
In her day EJ
knew most of the London literary world. She met Agatha Christie
, whom she described as the most elegantly dressed elderly woman I have ever seen.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
148
She counted among her...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ
said this was her own favourite among her books.
“Elizabeth Jenkins”. The Telegraph.
Elizabeth Bowen
said that sitting up late reading it in bed left her (in an Irish colloquialism) lying stretched for dead.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
140
The book roused...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jane Howard
It was after this novel that Robert Ostermann
wrote of EJH
in the National Observer as in the same class as Rosamond Lehmann
and Elizabeth Bowen
: female novelists of impressive intelligence and sensibilities that...
Textual Production
Susan Hill
The anthology of British women writers she published in 1990 with Michael Joseph
as The Parchment Moon: An Anthology of Modern Women's Short Stories was reprinted the following year as The Penguin Book of Modern...
Literary responses
Susan Hill
Critic Hermione Lee
, reviewing the collection for the Guardian, praised SH
's tender attention to detail, and likened her to L. P. Hartley
and Elizabeth Bowen
.
Lee, Hermione. “Like Buttons in a Box”. Guardian Unlimited.
Friends, Associates
H. D.
After her move to England, Ezra Pound
introduced HD to his circle of friends, many of whom were important figures in the modernist movement. They included W. B. Yeats
, T. S. Eliot
,...
Textual Production
Henry Green
HG
's rather small band of admirers (who have included Elizabeth Bowen
and Eudora Welty
) have always felt him to be seriously underestimated.
Education
Stella Gibbons
Writers Elizabeth Bowen
and Christina Hole
enrolled in this course at roughly the same time as SG
.
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury.
33
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
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...
