Elizabeth Bowen

One of Elizabeth Bowen's most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen's celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers' well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother's. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains.For Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the relations between Leopold, Henrietta's agitated hostess Naomi Fisher, Leopold's mysterious mother, his dead father, and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalizingly. And when Henrietta leaves the house that evening, it is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge usually reserved only for adults.

Elizabeth Bowen takes us on a tour through the history of the famous Dublin landmark, the Shelbourne Hotel, in this evocative account of Irish life.

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 reason 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.

The Last September is Elizabeth Bowen's portrait of a young woman's coming of age in a brutalized time and place, where the ordinariness of life floats like music over the impending doom of history. In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching--the end of British rule in the south of Ireland and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending. The Last September depicts the tensions between love and the longing for freedom, between tradition and the terrifying prospect of independence, both political and spiritual. "Brilliant.... A successful combination of social comedy and private tragedy."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)

Features seventy-nine stories such as: love stories, ghost stories, stories of childhood, of English middle-class life in the twenties and thirties, and of London during the Blitz.

Two of Bowenâ??s most memorable characters are in attendance: Lady Elfrida, a creature of privilege, and Theodora Thirdman, a gawky teenager with zero self-awareness. The sunset of prosperity is upon this complacent, moneyed class, but Bowenâ??s precise and beautiful prose pins real pain and comedy upon its inhabitants.

This selection of Bowen's non-fictional writings includes her wonderfully funny, precise recollections of schooldays and childhood experiences, her brilliant evocations of London in wartime and of the Irish 'big house', and penetrating accounts of some of her most famous contemporaries.

Markie's appearance disrupts the lives of both women, but in the pain of misunderstanding, it is Emmeline who reveals her vulnerability in a violent and tragic act. Reissued alongside The Hotel and The Little Girls

In 1914 they had been eleven years old; Fifty years later, Dinah, beautiful as ever, advertises in the national newspapers to find the other two â?? Clare, now established with a successful business, and Sheila, a married woman, glossy, chic and correct. What are the revelations - and the dangers - in summoning up childhood?

Bowen's Court describes the history of one Anglo-Irish family in County Cork from the Cromwellian settlement until 1959, when Elizabeth Bowen was forced to sell the family house she loved.

An immaculate portrait of adolescent love from one of our most beloved novelists. 'One of the last century's greatest woman writers' GuardianWhen sixteen-year-old Portia is orphaned, she is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home.

It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble.

Read Elizabeth Bowen's accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracyWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VICTORIA GLENDINNINGThe Irish troubles rage, but up at the 'Big House', tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates.

Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the mystery surrounding Leopold, his parents, Henrietta's agitated hostess and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalisingly.