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
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...
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...
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 Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Bowen , in her laudatory review, likened the icy sharpness of ICB 's dialogue to the sound of glass being swept up one of these London mornings after a blitz.
qtd. in
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
160
ICB received a...
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, 19 July 2003.
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Of this novel ICB wrote, I have never had such superficial reviews.
qtd. in
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
190
They did, however, praise the book, especially in the case of reviewers who were also novelists, like Elizabeth Bowen , Pamela Hansford Johnson
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 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...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
The Towers of Trebizond won the James Black Tait prize.
Babington Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay. Collins, 1972.
203
Bensen, Alice. Rose Macaulay. Twayne, 1969.
154
A reprint of 1959 quotes on its dustjacket a chorus of praise. John Betjeman and Sir Compton Mackenzie called the novel RM 's...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
RM later wrote, it's really a book for those who have travelled to the same place, or are about to.
Macaulay, Rose. Letters to a Friend from Rose Macaulay 1950-1952. Editor Babington Smith, Constance, Fontana, 1968.
70
Elizabeth Bowen called it an enchanting book, of high intelligence.
qtd. in
Lefanu, Sarah. Rose Macaulay. Virago, 2003.
243
Biographer Sarah Lefanu
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, 1934 -. Ink in Her Blood: The Life and Crime Fiction of Margery Allingham. UMI Research Press, 1988.
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 .
Persephone Books. http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/.
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...

Timeline

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Texts

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