Elizabeth Bowen
born June 7, 1899, Dublin, Ire.
died Feb. 22, 1973, London, Eng.
British novelist and short-story writer
who employed a finely wrought prose style in
fictions frequently detailing uneasy and
unfulfilling relationships among the
upper-middle class. The Death of the Heart
(1938), the title of one of her most highly
praised novels, might have served for most
of them.
Bowen was born of the Anglo-Irish gentry and
spent her early childhood in Dublin, as
related in her autobiographical fragment
Seven Winters (1942), and at the family
house she later inherited at Kildorrery,
County Cork. The history of the house is
recounted in Bowen’s Court (1942), and it is
the scene of her novel The Last September
(1929), which takes place during the
troubles that preceded Irish independence.
When she was 7, her father suffered a mental
illness, and she departed for England with
her mother, who died when Elizabeth was 12.
An only child, she lived with relatives on
the Kentish coast.
With a little money that enabled her to
live independently in London and to winter
in Italy, Bowen began writing short stories
at 20. Her first collection, Encounters,
appeared in 1923. It was followed in 1927 by
The Hotel, which contains a typical Bowen
heroine—a girl attempting to cope with a
life for which she is unprepared. The Last
September (1929) is an autumnal picture of
the Anglo-Irish gentry. The House in Paris
(1935), another of Bowen’s highly praised
novels, is a story of love and betrayal told
partly through the eyes of two children.
During World War II, Bowen worked for the
Ministry of Information in London and served
as an air raid warden. Her novel set in
wartime London, The Heat of the Day (1949),
is among her most significant works. The war
also forms the basis for one of her
collections of short stories, The Demon
Lover (1945; U.S. title, Ivy Gripped the
Steps). Her essays appear in Collected
Impressions (1950) and Afterthought (1962).
Bowen’s last book, Pictures and
Conversations (1975), is an introspective,
partly autobiographical collection of essays
and articles. Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth
Bowen and Charles Ritchie: Letters and
Diaries 1941–1973 (edited by Victoria
Glendinning), a record of Bowen’s lengthy
affair with a Canadian diplomat, was
published in 2009. The work, which features
her letters and his diaries, provides
insight into Bowen’s sometimes tumultuous
personal life.
