Elizabeth Bowen
| Elizabeth Bowen | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen 7 June 1899 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 22 February 1973 (aged 73) London, England |
| Notable works |
The Last September (1929) The House in Paris (1935) The Death of the Heart (1938) The Heat of the Day (1949) Eva Trout (1968) |
Elizabeth Bowen, CBE (/ˈboʊən/; 7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Irish novelist and short story writer.
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin and baptised in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street. Her parents, Henry Charles Cole Bowen and Florence (née Colley) Bowen later brought her to Bowen's Court at Farahy, near 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 seek out a publisher for her first book, a collection of short stories entitled 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." The marriage was reportedly never consummated. 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 a relationship with the American poet May Sarton. Bowen and her husband first lived near Oxford, where they socialized with Maurice Bowra, John Buchan and Susan Buchan, and where she wrote her early novels, including The Last September (1929). Following the publication of To the North (1932) they moved to 2 Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, London, where she wrote The House in Paris (1935) and The Death of the Heart (1938). In 1937, she became a member of the Irish Academy of Letters.
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