Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973,) fully Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, was a British novelist and short-story writer considered a major British novelist of the twentieth century. Her works portray the struggles of the individual will to fulfill itself in an unfamiliar, hostile world.
Born in County Cork to wealthy Anglo-Irish parents, Bowen moved to England at age seven and was raised by elderly relatives. Her writings about the unsatisfactory relationships between the upper-middle-class reflect the sense of isolation during her early life experiences.
Settling in London, Bowen published two volumes of short stories before her first novel, The Hotel (1927.) She produced a steady stream of novels and stories including The Death of the Heart (1938.)
During World War II, Bowen stayed in London and worked at the Ministry of Information during the daytime and as an air-raid warden at night. Her experiences in wartime London were personified in her best-known novel, The Heat of the Day (1949.)
Bowen’s later novels include A World of Love (1955,) The Little Girls (1964,) and Eva Trout (1969,) and the collections of essays Collected Impressions (1950) and After-thought (1962.) Also an insightful literary critic, she published English Novelists (1942.)
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If you look at your life one way, there is always cause for alarm.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Topics: Life, Attitude, Perception
When you love someone all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
—Elizabeth Bowen
The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Topics: Memory, Charm, Photography
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Topics: Absence
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Topics: Growth, Motivation
Experience isn’t interesting until it begins to repeat itself—in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Topics: Experience, Genius
No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Topics: Perspective
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
—Elizabeth Bowen
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