The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen

First published: 1980

Type of work: Short stories

Form and Content

Elizabeth Bowen once remarked that a specific collection of her short stories was a diary of a particular time in her life. In the collection published in 1980, the stories are arranged by the time of their composition. Beginning with an introduction by Angus Wilson that provides excellent biographical context for the short stories, the collection has five parts: “First Stories,” “The Twenties,” “The Thirties,” “The War Years,” and “Post-War Stories.” There are seventy-nine stories in total, and a section entitled “Bibliographical Note” completes the volume.

The volume includes short stories from three different collections. Bowen wrote numerous works: eight novels, five volumes of nonfiction, one volume of juvenile literature, and an autobiographical volume that was published posthumously. Bowen’s biography offers some helpful insights for appreciating the literary achievements of her short stories. She took the events of her life and reworked them into her art. She used the uncertainties of her childhood, including her relations with her parents, her experiences during World War II, and her physical appearance. She was a handsome woman, not beautiful, and above all she could be in a place but was never of one place.

Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 7, 1899, but the family home was Bowen’s Court, established by her Anglo-Irish ancestors in the eighteenth century and located in County Cork, Ireland. When she was seven, her father had a nervous breakdown and her mother took her to live in Kent, England. Her aunts reared her after her mother died in 1912. These insecure days left Bowen with a stammer and with a sense of transience that pervades all of her literary creations.

In the 1920’s, after a brief formal education, she published her first short stories and novels. In 1923, she married Alan Charles Cameron. Their marriage was happy, but Bowen had several extramarital affairs. In 1935, she and Cameron moved to London. During World War II, she was an air-raid warden and also worked for the Ministry of Information. After the war, she received many honors for her writings. After several moves, she returned to Bowen’s Court in 1952. Soon, the estate became a financial burden. Although the house was sold in 1960 and demolished a few years later, Bowen was stoic about the turn of events.

Bowen had several teaching positions in the United States, and she was made a Companion of Literature in 1965. She continued to write until her death, in London hospital, of lung complications; she had been a heavy cigarette smoker all of her adult life.

Context

Because Elizabeth Bowen was born in an earlier time, she was not a “feminist” writer. Bowen had no political agenda. As a literary artist, she dealt with a wide range of human beings, male and female, young and old. Her general orientation toward life and art made her skeptical of politics. As her stories reveal, she had experienced indifference from other people, and her tales explore the trauma of growing up.

Her stories deal with women as the main characters and not all of them are made victims of circumstance. Bowen’s female characters represent a full range of social types and psychological attributes, but, understandably, they are close to the personality of the author. They, like Bowen herself, are very much of a time and a place; they are historical beings. They represent universal values; therefore, they are literary art.

Bibliography

Austin, Allan E. Elizabeth Bowen. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1989. This brief biography and discussion of Bowen’s literary achievements is a volume in the Twayne’s English Authors series. It has an excellent chronology of her life.

Brooke, Jocelyn. Elizabeth Bowen. New York: Longmans, Green, 1952. The material in this small book is dated and incomplete because Bowen would live for an additional twenty years, but the volume clearly indicates her significance in the English literary world. The book was published for the British Council and the National Book League.

Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. Well written and balanced in literary judgment and valuations, this biography has many good references and sources for the further study of Bowen. At the same time, it provides enough detail for any reader to appreciate the way Bowen turned her life experiences, via a creative imagination, into enduring art.

Heath, William. Elizabeth Bowen: An Introduction to Her Novels. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961. While this work deals only with Bowen’s longer fiction, it contains some literary concepts and analytical tools that are helpful in understanding and enjoying her short stories. For example, Heath discusses the concept of the romantic will, which is expressed in various characters’ thought and behaviors and is indifferent to the larger world. Often the social consequences are tragic or grimly amusing. In the same way, tradition offers uncertainty to any given character’s spiritual development.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. This book provides an overview of the issue of a woman writer versus a writer who happens to be a woman. It considers the questions of whether literature that is simply gender-driven creates an art that is special to that sex and whether this literature can claim at the same time that it expresses universal qualities, while expressive of a particular time, place, and voice.

Wallace, Martin. Appletree Guide to Irish Writers. Minneapolis, Minn.: Appletree Press, 1992. In this handy description of Irish literary history via biographical sketches of writers, one can gain an appreciation for what that legacy meant to Bowen’s work.