Elizabeth Dorothea Cole BowenCBE (/ˈboʊən/BOH-ən; 7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was anAnglo-Irish novelist and short story writer notable for her books about "the Big House" of Irishlanded Protestants as well as her fiction about life in wartime London.
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place inDublin, daughter of barrister Henry Charles Cole Bowen[2] (1862–1930), who succeeded his father as head of their Irish gentry family traced back to the late 1500s, of Welsh origin,[3] and Florence Isabella Pomeroy (died 1912), daughter of Henry FitzGeorge Pomeroy Colley, of Mount Temple,Clontarf, Dublin, grandson of the 4thViscount Harberton. Florence Bowen's mother was granddaughter of the 4thViscount Powerscourt.[4][5] Elizabeth Bowen was baptised in the nearbySt Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street. Her parents later brought her to her father's family home,Bowen's Court at Farahy, nearKildorrery,County Cork, where she spent her summers. Among her enduring childhood friends were the artistsMainie Jellett andSylvia Cooke-Collis.
When her father became mentally ill in 1907, she and her mother moved to England, eventually settling inHythe. After her mother died in September 1912, Bowen was brought up by her aunts; her father remarried in 1918.[6] She was educated atDowne House School under the headship ofOlive Willis. After some time at art school in London she decided that her talent lay in writing. She mixed with theBloomsbury Group, becoming good friends withRose Macaulay, who helped her seek a publisher for her first book, a collection of short stories titledEncounters (1923).[citation needed]
In 1923, she married Alan Cameron, an educational administrator who subsequently worked for the BBC. The marriage has been described as "a sexless but contented union."[7] The marriage was reportedly never consummated.[8] She had various extra-marital relationships, including one withCharles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat seven years her junior, which lasted over thirty years. She also had an affair with the Irish writerSeán Ó Faoláin and a relationship with the American poetMay Sarton.[7]
In 1930, Bowen became the first (and only) woman to inheritBowen's Court, but remained based in England, making frequent visits to Ireland. During World War II, she worked for the BritishMinistry of Information, reporting on Irish opinion, particularly on the issue ofneutrality.[10] Bowen's political views tended towardsBurkean conservatism.[11][12] During and after the war she wrote about life in wartime London,The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945) andThe Heat of the Day (1948), works which earned acclaim for their depiction of that period. InNinety-nine Novels,Anthony Burgess wrote ofThe Heat of the Day that "No novel has better caught the atmosphere of London during the second world war."[13][14]
Bowen was awarded theCBE in 1948. Her husband retired in 1952 and they settled inBowen's Court, where he died a few months later. Many writers visited her at Bowen's Court from 1930 onward, includingVirginia Woolf,Eudora Welty,Carson McCullers,Iris Murdoch, and the historianVeronica Wedgwood. For years, Bowen struggled to keep the house, lecturing in the United States to earn money.
In 1957, her portrait was painted at Bowen's Court by her friend, painterPatrick Hennessy. She travelled to Italy in 1958 to research and prepareA Time in Rome (1960), but by the following year, Bowen was forced to sell her beloved Bowen's Court, which was demolished in 1960. In the following months, she wrote the narrative of the documentary titledIreland the Tear and the Smile forCBS[15] which was aimed at American audiences and presented byWalter Cronkite.[16] After spending some years without a permanent home, Bowen finally settled at "Carbery", Church Hill,Hythe, in 1965.
In 1972, Bowen developed lung cancer. She died inUniversity College Hospital on 22 February 1973, age 73. She is buried with her husband in St Colman's churchyard in Farahy, close to the gates of Bowen's Court. There is a memorial plaque to the author bearing the words ofJohn Sparrow at the entrance to St Colman's Church, where a commemoration of her life is held annually.[18][19][20]
In 1977,Victoria Glendinning published the first biography of Elizabeth Bowen. In 2009, Glendinning publishedLove's Civil War, a compilation of letters Bowen wrote to Charles Ritche during their relationship, and excerpts from Ritchie's diary.[21] In 2012,English Heritage marked Bowen's Regent's Park home atClarence Terrace with ablue plaque.[22] Another blue plaque was unveiled 19 October 2014 to mark Bowen's residence at the Coach House, The Croft,Headington, from 1925 to 1935.[23]
Bowen was interested in "life with the lid on and what happens when the lid comes off", in the innocence of orderly life, and in the eventual, irrepressible forces that transform experience. Bowen also examined the betrayal and secrets that lie beneath a veneer of respectability. The style of her works is highly wrought and owes much to literary modernism.[24][25]
She was an admirer of film and influenced by the filmmaking techniques of her day. The locations in which Bowen's works are set often bear heavily on the psychology of the characters and on the plots. Bowen's war novelThe Heat of the Day (1949) is considered one of the quintessential depictions of London's atmosphere during the bombing raids of World War II.
She was also a notable writer of ghost stories.[26] Supernatural fiction writerRobert Aickman considered Elizabeth Bowen to be "the most distinguished living practitioner" of ghost stories. He included her tale "The Demon Lover" in his anthologyThe Second Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories.[27]
Coughlan, P. (2018) ‘Elizabeth Bowen’, in Ingman, H. and Ó Gallchoir, C. (eds) A History of Modern Irish Women's Literature, 1st edn., Cambridge University Press, pp. 204–226.doi:10.1017/9781316442999.012 Available at:https://hdl.handle.net/10468/14892
Coughlan, P. (2021) ‘"We get all sealed up": an essay in five deaths’, Irish University Review, 51(1), pp. 9–23. https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2021.0492. Available at:https://hdl.handle.net/10468/14882
David Daiches: "The Novels of Elizabeth Bowen" inThe English Journal Vol. 38, No. 6 (1949)
Elizabeth Hardwick: "Elizabeth Bowen's Fiction" inPartisan Review Vol. 16 (1949)
Bruce Harkness: "The Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen" inThe English Journal Vol. 44, No. 9 (1955)
Gary T. Davenport: "Elizabeth Bowen and the Big House" inSouthern Humanities Review Vol. 8 (1974)
Martha McGowan: "The Enclosed Garden in Elizabeth Bowen'sA World of Love" inÉire-Ireland Vol. 16, Issue 1 (Spring 1981)
Seán Ó Faoláin: "A Reading and Remembrance of Elizabeth Bowen" inLondon Review of Books (4–17 March 1982)
Antoinette Quinn: "Elizabeth Bowen's Irish Stories: 1939-45" inStudies in Anglo-Irish Literature (1982)
Harriet S. Chessman: "Women and Language in the Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen" inTwentieth Century Literature Vol. 29, No. 1 (1983)
Brad Hooper: "Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Happy Autumn Fields': A Dream or Not?" inStudies in Short Fiction Vol. 21 (1984)
Margaret Scanlan: "Rumors of War: Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Last September and J. G. Farrell'sTroubles" inÉire-Ireland Vol. 20, Issue 2 (Summer 1985)
Phyllis Lassner: "The Past is a Burning Pattern: Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Last September" inÉire-Ireland Vol. 21, Issue 1 (Spring 1986)
John Coates: "Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Last September: The Loss of the Past and the Modern Consciousness" inDurham University Journal, Vol. LXXXII, No. 2 (1990)
Roy F. Foster: "The Irishness of Elizabeth Bowen" inPaddy & Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History (1993)
John Halperin: "The Good Tiger: Elizabeth Bowen" inEminent Georgians: The Lives of King George V, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby, and Nancy Astor (1995)
Julian Moynahan: "Elizabeth Bowen" inAnglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture (Princeton University Press, 1995)
Declan Kiberd: "Elizabeth Bowen: The Dandy in Revolt" in Éibhear Walshe:Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing (1997)
Carmen Concilio: "Things that Do Speak in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September" inMoments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary Epiphany edited by Wim Tigges (1999)
Neil Corcoran: "Discovery of a Lack: History and Ellipsis in Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Last September" inIrish University Review Vol. 31, No. 2 (2001)
Elizabeth Cullingford: "'Something Else': Gendering Onliness in Elizabeth Bowen's Early Fiction" inMFS Modern Fiction Studies Vol. 53, No. 2 (2007)
Elizabeth C. Inglesby: "'Expressive Objects': Elizabeth Bowen's Narrative Materializes" inMFS Modern Fiction Studies Vol. 53, No. 2 (2007)
Brook Miller: "The Impersonal Personal: Value, Voice, and Agency in Elizabeth Bowen's Literary and Social Criticism" inModern Fiction Studies, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 2007)
Heather Bryant Jordan: "A Bequest of Her Own: The Reinvention of Elizabeth Bowen" inNew Hibernia Review Vol. 12, No. 2 (2008)
Céline Magot: "Elizabeth Bowen's London inThe Heat of the Day: An Impression of the City in the Territory of War" inLiterary London (2008)
Éibhear Walshe: "No abiding city."The Dublin Review No. 36 (2009)
Jessica Gildersleeve: "An Unnameable Thing: Spectral Shadows in Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Hotel andThe Last September" inPerforations
John D. Coates: "The Misfortunes of Eva Trout" inEssays in Criticism 48.1 (1998)
Karen Schaller: "Feeling Political: Elizabeth Bowen in the 1940s" in Tew, P and White, G (Eds),The 1940s: A Decade of Modern Fiction (Bloomsbury Academic Press), pp 139–162'
Karen Schaller: "'I know it to be synthetic but it affects me strongly': 'Dead Mabelle' and Bowen's Emotion Pictures" inTextual Practice 27.1 (2013)
Patricia J. Smith: "'Everything to Dread from the Dispossessed': Changing Scenes and the End of the Modernist Heroine in Elizabeth Bowen'sEva Trout" inHecate 35.1/2 (2009)
James F. Wurtz: "Elizabeth Bowen, Modernism, and the Spectre of Anglo-Ireland" inEstudios Irlandeses No. 5 (2010)
Patrick W. Moran: "Elizabeth Bowen's Toys and the Imperatives of Play" inÉire-Ireland Vol. 46, Issue 1&2 (Spring/Summer 2011)
Kathryn Johnson:"'Phantasmagoric Hinterlands': Adolescence and Anglo-Ireland in Elizabeth Bowen'sThe House in Paris andThe Death of the Heart" inIrish Women Writers: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Elke d'Hoker, et al. (2011)
Tina O'Toole: "Unregenerate Spirits: The Counter-Cultural Experiments of George Egerton and Elizabeth Bowen" inIrish Women Writers: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Elke d'Hoker, et al. (2011)
Lauren Elkin: "Light's Language: Sensation and Subjectivity in Elizabeth Bowen's Early Novels." Réfléchir (sur) la sensation, ed. Marina Poisson (2014)
Gerry Smyth, "A Spy in the House of Love: Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Heat of the Day (1949)" inThe Judas Kiss: Treason and Betrayal in Six Modern Irish Novels (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 115-34
^"Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen", (1899–1973),Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, online edition
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 4898). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^From Bowen's preface toEarly Stories, 1951: "None of [the stories inEncounters] had 'appeared' before: any magazine editors with whom I experimented had rejected them"
^Sellery, J'nan (1981).Elizabeth Bowen, a Bibliography.
^Hepburn, Allan (2008).The Bazaar and Other Stories.
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