Elizabeth Bowen – författare

Krigstidens London under bombningarna, det explosiva fysiska rummet såväl som känslorna och föreställningarna, har väl aldrig skildrats med sådan ingående intensitet som hos Elizabeth Bowen. Då inte minst i Älskaren som var demon och andra berättelser [The Demon Lover and Other Stories, 1945], hennes viktigaste enskilda novellsamling. Denna samling speglar också hennes komplexa förhållande till hemlandet Irland, där hon som barn växte upp i den styrande angloirländska klassen. Människorna i dessa noveller lever i krigets extrema och akuta vardag, samtidigt som de själva blir ett slags spökhistorier; i drömmar om ett definitivt svunnet förflutet eller genom annan flykt från verkligheten - som till exempel i den oförglömliga, hallucinatoriska titelnovellen.En av 1900-talets stora engelskspråkiga klassiker i novellgenren återutges härmed, i svensk översättning av Viveka Starfelt.ELIZABETH BOWEN [1899-1973] var en irländsk författare, som i dag räknas till 1900-talets stora namn i den engelska litteraturen.Hjärtats död [The Death of the Heart, 1938] är ett av hennes mest centrala verk; en av de stora romanerna från förkrigstidens England, inkluderad på såväl Time Magazines som Modern Librarys listor över 1900-talets 100 bästa engelskspråkiga romaner.

It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. 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.

A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war.It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. 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.‘Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death’ London Review of BooksWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTERThis series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition

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. Bowen reviews ten generations of her family, representatives of the Protestant Irish gentry whose lives were dominated by property, lawsuits, formidable matriarchs, violent conflicts, hunting, drinking, and self-destructive fantasies.Seven Winters recalls with endearing candour Bowen's family and her Dublin childhood as seen through the eyes of a child who could not read till she was seven and who fed her imagination only on sights and sounds.

Elizabeth Bowen's account of a time spent in Rome is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city - its history, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants and their often bloody activities and speculates about the immense noise of ancient Rome, the problems caused by the Romans' dining posture, and the Roman temperament. She evokes the city's moods - by day, when it is characterised by golden sunlight, and at night, when the blaze of the moon 'annihilates history'.

'One of the best novels about a young woman that I’ve ever read' Greta GerwigWhen sixteen-year-old Portia is orphaned, she is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home. There she encounters the attractive cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and he 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.'One of the last century's greatest woman writers' Guardian'This is a stunning portrait of the human heart, a raw account of romantic betrayal and the pains of growing up' Sunday Times **One of the 50 best books of the past 100 years**

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. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A.S. BYATTWhen eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers' residence in Paris, little does she know what fascinating secrets the house itself contains. 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.

It's the balmy days of the 1920s and where could be more pleasant for a holiday than a hotel on the Italian Riviera? Filled with prosperous English visitors, the Hotel offers a closed world of wealth and comfort. It also provides the stage for the display of social niceties, for passionate but unspoken love affairs and for the comedy of the shared bathroom. With great wit and insight Elizabeth Bowen's first novel lays bare the intricacies and eccentricities of polite society.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. N. WILSONThroughout these seventy-nine stories - love stories, ghost stories, stories of childhood, of English middle-class life in the twenties and thirties, of London during the Blitz - Elizabeth Bowen combines social comedy and reportage, perception and vision in an oeuvre which reveals, as Angus Wilson affirms in his introduction, that 'the instinctive artist is there at the very heart of her work'.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEYImposing, rich, unloved and with a genius for unreality; Eva Trout has a 'capacity for making trouble, attracting trouble, strewing trouble around her' that is endless. Eva Trout was Elizabeth Bowen's last completed novel, and in it her elegant style, her gift for social comedy and her intense sensibility combine to create one of her most formidable - and moving - heroines.

Cecilia, capricious and unable to love, inches reluctantly towards a second marriage to the kind, passionless Julian Tower. Meanwhile, her sister-in-law, Emmeline, is surprised to find the calm tenor of her life disturbed by her attraction to the predatory Mark Linkwater. 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

British vacationers spend time in a luxurious seaside hotel on the Italian Riviera intrigued by the mystery surrounding Sydney Warren, a young woman in her twenties, who mixes up with the cast of characters creating bewilderment for them.

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.

In this glitterring new clothbound edition of the beloved Christmas chiller, the gifts are unwrapped, the feast has been consumed and the fire is well fed – but the ghosts are still hungry.Chill Tidings ushers in a host of ghastly phantoms and otherworldly intruders bent on ruining, or partaking in, the most wonderful time of the year. With classic tales from Algernon Blackwood, Elizabeth Bowen, Charlotte Riddell and L P Hartley, jostling with rare pieces from the sleeping periodicals and literary magazines of the British Library collections, it’s time to open the door and let the real festivities begin.Welcome to this beautiful new edition of the beloved collection of Christmas nightmares that have been scaring readers since 2020. With a new afterword by Tanya Kirk, this book celebrates the timeless tradition of cosying up during the cold winter nights whilst these dark tales send a chill down your spine.

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.

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.

A prolific writer of short stories, Elizabeth Bowen claimed towards the end of her life that "a story deals in the not-yet-thought-of but always possible." Covering a range of situations - broken engagements, encounters with ghosts, brushes with crime - these stories demonstrate the virtuosity of technique that characterizes all of Bowen's writing. "The Lost Hope" ranks with the best of her war stories. Shattering the lives of soldiers and civilians alike, the war cancels the promise shown by the generation that came of age in the 1940s. Yet the war also clears a path to the future, as happens in "Comfort and Joy" and "The Last Bus." Bowen's characters live in the grip of intense circumstances. They respond ardently or ironically to their dilemmas, and sometimes both at once, as does sulky, big-limbed Doris Simonez in "Flowers Will Do." If some of the children in these stories are too wise for their age, like the punctual protagonist of "The Unromantic Princess," adults occasionally behave with no insight at all into their actions. Humour in these tales ranges from the sardonic to the light-hearted. In the title story, "The Bazaar," Captain Winch begs everyone for pins and ends up stealing some. Lady Hottenham gives an impromptu little speech that drifts agonizingly into cliché. The fairy tales, fables, and social dramas in this volume were never gathered together during Bowen's lifetime; a few exist only in unfinished draft. With this collection, Bowen, gifted with keen social observation, justifies her place in the company of D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.Key Features:*Brings together for the first time Bowen's uncollected short stories*Demonstrates the diversity of Bowen's short fiction across her writing career*The stories cover familiar Bowen themes of marriage, travel, estrangement, disappointment and disinheritance*Completes the picture of Bowen as a compelling writing of the short story