Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE (7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer.
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Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin and later brought to Bowen’s Court in Kildorrery County Cork where she spent her summers. When her father became mentally ill in 1907, she and her mother moved to England, eventually settling in Hythe. After her mother died in 1912, Bowen was brought up by her aunts.
She was educated at Downe House School, under the headship of Olive Willis. After some time at art school in London she decided that her talent lay in writing. She mixed with the Bloomsbury Group, becoming good friends with Rose Macaulay, who helped her find a publisher for her first book, Encounters (1923).
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" [1]. She had various extra-marital relationships, including one with Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat seven years her junior, which lasted over thirty years. She also had an affair with the Irish writer Seán Ó Faoláin and at least one lesbian entanglement, with the American poet, May Sarton [2].
Bowen inherited Bowen's Court in 1930, but remained based in England, making frequent visits to Ireland. During World War II she worked for the British Ministry of Information, reporting on Irish opinion, particularly on the issue of Irish neutrality [3].
Her husband retired in 1952 and they settled in Bowen’s Court, where Alan Cameron died a few months later. For years Bowen struggled to keep the house going, lecturing in the United States to earn money. In 1959 the house was sold and demolished.
Bowen received recognition for her work, being awarded the 1969 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Eva Trout as well as Doctorates in Literature from Trinity College, Dublin (1949) and the University of Oxford (1952). She was also awarded the CBE.
After spending some years without a permanent home, Bowen settled in Hythe and died of cancer in 1973, aged 73. She is buried with her husband in Farahy church yard, close to the gates of Bowen’s Court. A commemoration of her life is held annually in Farahy church.
Elizabeth Bowen was greatly interested in ‘life with the lid on and what happens when the lid comes off,’ or in other words, 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 the veneer of respectability. The style of her works is highly wrought and owes much to literary modernism. 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, thus, also on the plots.
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Elizabeth Bowen (1899-06-07 – 1973-02-22) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer.
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But the hold of the country was that, she considered, it could be thought of in terms of oneself, so interpreted.
   | Literary Encyclopedia biography - Literary Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Bowen |
| | Elizabeth Bowen's London in The Heat of the Day: An Impression of the City in the Territory of War by Céline Magot - Elizabeth Bowen's London in The Heat of the Day: An Impression of the City in the Territory of War |
| | Elizabeth Bowen and her Headington home - Elizabeth Bowen and Headington |
| | Elizabeth Bowen MySpace - MySpace.com - Elizabeth Bowen - 77 - Female - UK - myspace.com/elizabeth_bowen |
| | Elizabeth Bowen Collection - Elizbeth Bowen: An Inventory of Her Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center |
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