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'Bowen's stories are novels that have been split open like rocks
and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed
them' Vogue SELECTED AND WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEY A
girl shares her secret den. A couple stroll through a ruined city.
A man walks into a ladies' hat shop. A teacher dreams of killing
her pupil. Spanning the 1920s to the post-war years, this new
selection brings Elizabeth Bowen's finest short stories together
for the first time. Elegant and subtle, they showcase Bowen's
ability to evoke ineffable emotions - grief, nostalgia,
self-consciousness, dread - and combine remarkable psychological
insight with vivid settings, from the countryside of Bowen's native
Ireland to the streets of her London home after the Blitz.
Encompassing characters from many walks of life and a vast array of
moods, these are intricate journeys of domesticity and discovery,
of the homely and uncanny, of the mind and body.
As the smoky dark sweeps across the capital, strange stories emerge
from the night. A seance reveals a ghastly secret in the murk of
Regent's Canal. From south of the Thames come chilling reports of a
spring-heeled spectre, and in Stoke Newington rumours abound of an
opening to another world among the quiet alleys. Join Elizabeth
Dearnley on this atmospheric tour through a shadowy London, a city
which has long inspired writers of the weird and uncanny. Waiting
in the hazy streets are eerie tales from Charlotte Riddell, Lettice
Galbraith and Violet Hunt, along with haunting pieces by Virginia
Woolf, Arthur Machen, Sam Selvon and many more.
On the face of it the story is about a woman who is given reason to suspect that the man with whom she is in love is betraying his country Another man is on his track, and a triangular situation develops. All the elements of a hunter-and-hunted thriller are here, but what she makes of them is an internal drama of remarkable perception and understanding in a domestic setting in embattled London. Her imagineative interpretation of the effect of war on the manners, morals and emotions of those not directly engaged in the fighting is drawn from an uncannily poignant recall of the wartime London scene.
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The Hotel (Paperback)
Elizabeth Bowen
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R551
R414
Discovery Miles 4 140
Save R137 (25%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Marching with April (Paperback)
Hugo Charteris; Introduction by Frederic Raphael; Contributions by Elizabeth Bowen
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R404
R366
Discovery Miles 3 660
Save R38 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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A collection of nine of the great Irish writer's stories set in her
homeland. One of the most highly regarded novelists of this century
and a prolific writer of short stories, she made the short story
peculiarly her own and some of her Irish stories -- including "Her
Table Spread", "Summer Night", and "The Happy Autumn Fields", all
included in this collection, are considered by Glendinning, who was
her official biographer, to be among her greatest.
This volume collects for the first time essays published in
British, Irish, and American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime as
well as essays which have never been published before. The range of
subjects alone makes these essays indispensable reading.Throughout
her career, Elizabeth Bowen, the Anglo-Irish novelist and short
story writer, also wrote literary essays that display a shrewd,
generous intelligence. Always sensitive to underlying tensions, she
evokes the particular climate of countries and places in Hungary,"
"Prague and the Crisis," and "Bowen's Court." In "Britain in
Autumn," she records the strained atmosphere of the blitz as no
other writer does. Immediately after the war, she reported on the
International Peace Conference in Paris in a series of essays that
are startling in their evocation of tense diplomacy among
international delegates scrabbling to define the boundaries of
Europe and the stakes of the Cold War. The aftershock of war
registers poignantly in "Opening Up the House": owners evacuated
during the war return to their houses empty since 1939. Other
essays in this volume, especially those on James Joyce, Jane
Austen, and the technique of writing, offer indispensable
mid-century evaluations of the state of literature. The essays
assembled in this volume were published in British, Irish, and
American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime. She herself did not
gather them into any collection. Some of these essays exist only as
typescript drafts and are published here for the first time.
Bowen's observations on age, toys, disappointment, charm, and
manners place her among the very best literary essayists of the
modernist period.
In 1914, three eleven-year-old girls buried a box in a thicket on
the coast of England, shortly before World War I sent their lives
on divergent paths. Nearly fifty years later, a series of
mysteriously-worded classified ads brings the women reluctantly
together again. Dinah has grown from a chubby, bossy girl to a
beautiful, eccentric widow. The clever, reticent Clare has
blossomed into an imperious entrepreneur of independent means. And
Sheila--who was once the pretty princess of her small universe--has
weathered disappointed aspirations to become a chic and glossily
correct housewife.
As these radically different women confront one another and their
shared secrets, the hard-won complacencies of their present selves
are irrevocably shattered. In a novel as subtle and compelling as a
mystery, Elizabeth Bowen explores the buried revelations--and the
dangers--that attend the summoning up of childhood and the
long-concealed scars of the past.
In a writing career that spanned the 1920s to the 1960s, Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen created a rich and nuanced body of work in which she enlarged the comedy of manners with her own stunning brand of emotional and psychological depth.
In A World of Love, an uneasy group of relations are living under one roof at Montefort, a decaying manor in the Irish countryside. When twenty-year-old Jane finds in the attic a packet of love letters written years ago by Guy, her mother’s one-time fiance who died in World War I, the discovery has explosive repercussions. It is not clear to whom the letters are addressed, and their appearance begins to lay bare the strange and unspoken connections between the adults now living in the house. Soon, a girl on the brink of womanhood, a mother haunted by love lost, and a ruined matchmaker with her own claim on the dead wage a battle that makes the ghostly Guy as real a presence in Montefort as any of the living.
FRIENDS AND RELATIONS, of all Elizabeth Bowen's novels, is perhaps the most personal and the most domestic. This is a view of life in a moneyed upper-middle class enjoying its sunset of prosperity, securityand complacency - and by no means free from triviality. But its very narrowness is rich in comedy, and it enables Elizabeth Bowen to createtwo of her most memorable characters - Lady Elfrida, a creature of privilege, and Theodora Thirdman, the gawky and obtrusive adolescent who carries her emotionalism into adult life.
This volume collects for the first time essays published in
British, Irish, and American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime as
well as essays which have never been published before. The range of
subjects alone makes these essays indispensable reading.Throughout
her career, Elizabeth Bowen, the Anglo-Irish novelist and short
story writer, also wrote literary essays that display a shrewd,
generous intelligence. Always sensitive to underlying tensions, she
evokes the particular climate of countries and places in Hungary,"
"Prague and the Crisis," and "Bowen's Court." In "Britain in
Autumn," she records the strained atmosphere of the blitz as no
other writer does. Immediately after the war, she reported on the
International Peace Conference in Paris in a series of essays that
are startling in their evocation of tense diplomacy among
international delegates scrabbling to define the boundaries of
Europe and the stakes of the Cold War. The aftershock of war
registers poignantly in "Opening Up the House": owners evacuated
during the war return to their houses empty since 1939. Other
essays in this volume, especially those on James Joyce, Jane
Austen, and the technique of writing, offer indispensable
mid-century evaluations of the state of literature. The essays
assembled in this volume were published in British, Irish, and
American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime. She herself did not
gather them into any collection. Some of these essays exist only as
typescript drafts and are published here for the first time.
Bowen's observations on age, toys, disappointment, charm, and
manners place her among the very best literary essayists of the
modernist period.
It is London in the late 1930s, and into a coterie of rather grand early-middle-aged people the sixteen-year-old orphan Portia is plungedbeyond her depth. Disconcertingly vulnerable, Portia is manifestly trying to understand what is going on around her and looking for something that is not there. Evident victim, she is also an inadvertent victimiser - her impossible lovingness and austere trust being too much for her admirer Eddie, who is himself defensive and uncomfortable in this society which has managed to bring them together. In the midst of the rising tension is set perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's most brilliant piece of social comedy, when, at a seaside villa full of rollicking young people, Portia experiences at least temporary relief from the misery Eddie seems determined to bring her.
The family at the 'big house' is in an equivocal position. Interest and tradition should make them support the British but affection ties them to the now resistant people of the surrounding country. Meanwhile, tennis parties and dances are still held, against a background of ambushes. Young officers dance and flirt, or, armed, they patrol the countryside. Faint vibrations of trouble that she cannot understand reach the young girl Lois, who at the same time takes nothing for granted: she is a child of the transition period. Time is not standing still, and no one really believes that it is. Fate is moving in the direction of this apparently immune and remote place. The young are set to be desolating free, the old desolated, by a violent act.
A packet of letters, found in an attic, leads young Jane into the
world of love. The attic is in Montefort, a corroding country house
in County Cork, which harbours a collection of people held there by
ties of kinship or habit, and haunted by the memory of its former
owner. During a hot and dry summer, Jane pursues her romantic
imaginings, while not far off the rich, promiscuous Lady Latterly
waits to play her part in Jane's awakening.
The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.
In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reaason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.
TO THE NORTH portrays a classic romantic entanglement of a love sympathetic, honest, well-meaning young woman who cannot resist becoming involved with a man who is patently caddish and predatory. Instriking and richly comic contrast to the turbulence of this passion is the cool, detached atmosphere of the house in St John's Wood in which it takes its course - where the young woman's sister-in-law with her strictly unromantic preoccupations is always near by, the orphaned teenager Pauline presents herself as gawky innocence itself, and the power-loving busybody Lady Waters misses nothing.
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Frost In May (Paperback, New ed)
Antonia White; Introduction by Tessa Hadley, Elizabeth Bowen
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R308
R250
Discovery Miles 2 500
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is
sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient and
eager to please, she accepts this closed world where, with all the
enthusiasm of the outsider, her desires and passions become only
those the school permits. Her only deviation from total obedience
is the passionate friendships she makes. Convent life is perfectly
captured - the smell of beeswax and incense; the petty cruelties of
the nuns; the eccentricities of Nanda's school friends.
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Riversdale (Hardcover)
Charlotte Elizabeth Bowen; Created by Society for Promoting Christian Knowledg
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R838
Discovery Miles 8 380
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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