Elizabeth Bowen (1) (1899–1973)
Author of The Death of the Heart
For other authors named Elizabeth Bowen, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Elizabeth Bowen, distinguished Anglo-Irish novelist, was born in Dublin in 1899, traveled extensively, lived in London, and inherited the family estate-Bowen's Court, in County Cork. Her account of the house, Bowen's Court (1942), with a detailed fictionalized history of the family in Ireland show more through three centuries, has charm, warmth, and insight. Seven Winters is a fragment of autobiography published in England in 1942. The "Afterthoughts" of the original edition are critical essays in which she discusses and analyzes, among others, such literary figures as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield, Anthony Trollope, and Eudora Welty. Bowen's stories, mostly about people of the British upper middle class, portray relationships that are never simple, except, perhaps, on the surface. Her concern with time and memory is a major theme. Beautifully and delicately written, her stories, with their oblique psychological revelations, are symbolic, subtle, and terrifying. A Time in Rome (1960) is her brilliant evocation of that city and its layered past. In 1948, Bowen was made a Commander of the British Empire. Bowen died in 1973. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Elizabeth Bowen
Love's Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie: Letters and Diaries 1941-1973 (2008) — Author — 70 copies
Why Do I Write?: An Exchange of Views Between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene and V.S.Pritchett (English Literature… (1948) 6 copies
The Demon Lover [short story] 3 copies
Mysterious Kor 3 copies
Sunday Afternoon 2 copies
Telling [short story] 2 copies
The Faber book of modern stories 2 copies
Reduced 1 copy
Green Holly 1 copy
The Happy Autumn Fields 1 copy
Maria 1 copy
Bowen Elizabeth 1 copy
Las mujeres observadas 1 copy
anything 1 copy
Die ferne Stadt Kor. Erzählungen. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Annette Charpentier, Katrine von Hutten und… (1985) 1 copy
Pink May 1 copy
Spookverhalen 1 copy
Contos Fantásticos 1 copy
The Faber Book of Modern Stories — Editor — 1 copy
Associated Works
The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales (1967) — Contributor; Author, some editions — 47 copies
Out of the Best Books: An Anthology of Literature, Vol. 1: The Individual and Human Values (1964) — Contributor — 40 copies
Ladies of Horror: Two Centuries of Supernatural Stories by the Gentle Sex (1971) — Contributor — 24 copies
Het neusje van de zalm een feestelijke bloemlezing uit Querido's 'vlaggetjesreeks' (1986) — Contributor — 5 copies
The Best British Short Stories of 1933 — Contributor, some editions — 2 copies
Horizon 21 (September 1941) — Contributor — 2 copies
Uncle Silas ... With an introduction by Elizabeth Bowen — Introduction, some editions — 1 copy
Gespenster — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Bowen, Elizabeth
- Legal name
- Cameron, Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
- Other names
- Bowen, Bitha
Bowen, Elizabeth - Birthdate
- 1899-06-07
- Date of death
- 1973-02-22
- Burial location
- St Colman's Church, Farahy, County Cork, Ireland
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Ireland
- Birthplace
- Dublin, Ireland
- Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Dublin, Ireland
Farahy, Ireland
Hythe, England, UK
Regent's Park, London, England, UK
Headington, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK - Education
- Downe House School, Kent, England, UK
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer - Relationships
- Ritchie, Charles (lover)
- Awards and honors
- Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1948)
Companion of Literature (1965)
Doctor of Letters, Trinity College, Dublin
Doctor of Letters, Oxford University (1956)
Lacy Martin Donnelly Fellow (1956) - Short biography
- Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and landowner. Her book Bowen's Court (1942) is the history of her family and their house in County Cork. Throughout her life, she divided her time between London and Bowen's Court, which she inherited. She had friends among the Bloomsbury Group, and was close to Rose Macaulay, who helped her find a publisher for her first book, a collection of short stories called Encounters (1923). During World War II, Elizabeth Bowen lived in London and worked for the British Ministry of Information. She received acclaim for her novels and short story collections, was awarded the CBE (Companion of the Order of the British Empire) in 1948, and was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1965. She died in 1973.
Members
Reviews
The Little Girls (Twentieth Century Classics) by Elizabeth Bowen
After having failed at finishing The Diary of a Country Priest, I thought I would give this a try. Maybe it's the weather, but I didn't like this any better than the other, in fact I liked it less. I love how Bowen chooses her words. But I don't like the story she tells. So I gave up on this one too, except unlike the other that went back onto my TBR shelf for another day, this one goes into the giveaway pile.
I should never write what had happened down. One's nature is to forget, and one ought to go by that. Memory is quite unbearable enough, but even so it leaves out quite a lot. It wouldn't let one down as gently, even, as that if it weren't more than half a fake—we remember to suit ourselves. [...] If one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past. Thank God, except at its one moment there’s never any such thing as a bare fact. Ten minutes later, half an hour later, one’s begun to gloze the fact over with a deposit of some sort. The hours I spent with thee dear love are like a string of pearls to me. But a diary (if one did keep it up to date) would come much too near the mark. One ought to secrete for sometime before one begins to look back at anything. Look how reconciled to everything reminiscences are. . . . Also, suppose somebody read it?
The discovery of a sentimental teenage diary catalyzes the plot of The Death of the Heart. Once it's discovered that recently orphaned Portia analyzes her feelings and is susceptible to sincere love, the adults in her life seek to "socialize" her by inuring her to feeling anything at all. In lieu of processing trauma, her brother and his wife advocate a sort of anaesthetization to any emotion rising above pique. Portia's free sincerity is meant to be constrained, folded under. Any loss or pain is meant to be "glozed over" with a varnish of falsity. But Bowen shows us that by editing certain facts from our memory and hiding the truth from ourselves and others we turn our lives into a fiction—a mere pantomime of life—which inevitably results in a sort of existential atrophy. That is, a death of the heart.… (more)
The discovery of a sentimental teenage diary catalyzes the plot of The Death of the Heart. Once it's discovered that recently orphaned Portia analyzes her feelings and is susceptible to sincere love, the adults in her life seek to "socialize" her by inuring her to feeling anything at all. In lieu of processing trauma, her brother and his wife advocate a sort of anaesthetization to any emotion rising above pique. Portia's free sincerity is meant to be constrained, folded under. Any loss or pain is meant to be "glozed over" with a varnish of falsity. But Bowen shows us that by editing certain facts from our memory and hiding the truth from ourselves and others we turn our lives into a fiction—a mere pantomime of life—which inevitably results in a sort of existential atrophy. That is, a death of the heart.… (more)
Bowen is a gifted writer but drowns in her own subterranean world. Published in 1948, the style leans very heavily on description, a choice that apparently left less time for showing deeper insight into characters. For a novel to be character driven, the reader must be shown certainly not all, but enough, of not just the character’s motivations but any transformations. The book does a fairly good job of capturing a point in time, during WW11 London, where people of all walks of life felt uprooted and vulnerable, as the characters each reach out in their own way, fumbling blindly in the dark, for some kind of connection to others, no matter how desultory or unfulfilling. People are strange, families are annoying, world events intrude on lives, everyone has a backstory that for the most part remains hidden: this commonplace isn’t enough to warrant a novel.
The weakest part of the book is the character of Robert, the lover of the protagonist Stella: there was simply not enough development to allow him to be anything more than a vague representative of disenchantment, of a desperate desire for Something Else. His reveal is anticlimactic at best, an afterthought at worst. It isn’t so much that a reader may not like any of the characters (I have never understood why that should be an issue) it’s that it would be hard to care one way or another about what happens to them.
This book is neither a ‘thriller’ not anything approaching Woolf or Graham Greene, despite the front cover blurb. Despite some excellent passages, the concept of the book outshines its execution. There is enough promise in the book to encourage reading Bowen’s other work.… (more)
The weakest part of the book is the character of Robert, the lover of the protagonist Stella: there was simply not enough development to allow him to be anything more than a vague representative of disenchantment, of a desperate desire for Something Else. His reveal is anticlimactic at best, an afterthought at worst. It isn’t so much that a reader may not like any of the characters (I have never understood why that should be an issue) it’s that it would be hard to care one way or another about what happens to them.
This book is neither a ‘thriller’ not anything approaching Woolf or Graham Greene, despite the front cover blurb. Despite some excellent passages, the concept of the book outshines its execution. There is enough promise in the book to encourage reading Bowen’s other work.… (more)
"Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own."
The first word people have used to describe for me Elizabeth Bowen's writing is often "difficult". I now see they are wrong. Where some minds find difficulty, those of us with clearer vision see rare intelligence. Bowen was a younger member of the Bloomsbury Group, often defined as a generational link between Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark. She toys with the fragmented modernism of the former, while sinking her teeth into the detached British realism of the latter. It is the frisson of this combination that gives her work its unique voice.
The House in Paris takes place over one day, as 11-year-old Henrietta and 9-year-old Leopold pass through the home of Miss Naomi Fisher and her ailing mother. The children do not know each other; the orphaned Henrietta is en route to visit her grandmother, and needs a place to stop, while Leopold is to meet his mother for the first time today, after having been raised by family friends in Italy. Both children's unusual circumstances are joined by their respective mothers' friendships with Miss Fisher. In the repressive atmosphere of the house, secrets unfold amongst these four unnerved characters and their ultimate guest.
Bowen's style is perhaps best described as "detached", somewhere on that mid-20th century spectrum of writers whom I adore so, whose characters are financially "comfortable" but often on a downward trajectory, and whose speech - clipped yet romantic - invites the reader to fill in the silences. If you have tasted the sweet delights of Murdoch and Durrell, of Penelope Fitzgerald and Barbara Pym, seek comfort here. If your preferences lean in the other direction, Bowen may not be for you! Says one of the characters: "I cannot live in a love affair, I am busy and grasping. I am not English; you know I am nervous the whole time. I could not endure being conscious of anyone. Naomi is like furniture or the dark. I should pity myself if I did not marry her."
"The Present" takes up about half of this short novel, but the meat of Bowen's story is in the central section, "The Past". The true details of Naomi Fisher's youth, of Leopold's provenance, of Madame Fisher in her prime, are interspersed in the details of a love affair as delicate as a hothouse flower. Bowen tears at the fragile stitches of these characters, revealing flesh that is bruised and sore. The content of the book - and, in truth, sometimes its individual moments - could be found in a lesser soft romance novel of the period. But Bowen's prose refuses to be cowed. She slips between tenses, surprises us with changes in narrative voice and tone, and generally keeps the atmosphere on the thinnest ice.
Unsettling, but beautiful.… (more)
The first word people have used to describe for me Elizabeth Bowen's writing is often "difficult". I now see they are wrong. Where some minds find difficulty, those of us with clearer vision see rare intelligence. Bowen was a younger member of the Bloomsbury Group, often defined as a generational link between Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark. She toys with the fragmented modernism of the former, while sinking her teeth into the detached British realism of the latter. It is the frisson of this combination that gives her work its unique voice.
The House in Paris takes place over one day, as 11-year-old Henrietta and 9-year-old Leopold pass through the home of Miss Naomi Fisher and her ailing mother. The children do not know each other; the orphaned Henrietta is en route to visit her grandmother, and needs a place to stop, while Leopold is to meet his mother for the first time today, after having been raised by family friends in Italy. Both children's unusual circumstances are joined by their respective mothers' friendships with Miss Fisher. In the repressive atmosphere of the house, secrets unfold amongst these four unnerved characters and their ultimate guest.
Bowen's style is perhaps best described as "detached", somewhere on that mid-20th century spectrum of writers whom I adore so, whose characters are financially "comfortable" but often on a downward trajectory, and whose speech - clipped yet romantic - invites the reader to fill in the silences. If you have tasted the sweet delights of Murdoch and Durrell, of Penelope Fitzgerald and Barbara Pym, seek comfort here. If your preferences lean in the other direction, Bowen may not be for you! Says one of the characters: "I cannot live in a love affair, I am busy and grasping. I am not English; you know I am nervous the whole time. I could not endure being conscious of anyone. Naomi is like furniture or the dark. I should pity myself if I did not marry her."
"The Present" takes up about half of this short novel, but the meat of Bowen's story is in the central section, "The Past". The true details of Naomi Fisher's youth, of Leopold's provenance, of Madame Fisher in her prime, are interspersed in the details of a love affair as delicate as a hothouse flower. Bowen tears at the fragile stitches of these characters, revealing flesh that is bruised and sore. The content of the book - and, in truth, sometimes its individual moments - could be found in a lesser soft romance novel of the period. But Bowen's prose refuses to be cowed. She slips between tenses, surprises us with changes in narrative voice and tone, and generally keeps the atmosphere on the thinnest ice.
Unsettling, but beautiful.… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 77
- Also by
- 84
- Members
- 8,191
- Popularity
- #2,956
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 174
- ISBNs
- 264
- Languages
- 7
- Favorited
- 16
