People, Places, Things - Essays by Elizabeth Bowen - (Paperback)

About the Book

This volume collects for the first time essays published in British, Irish, and American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime as well as essays which have never been published before. The essays include Bowen's observations on age, toys, disappointment, writers, and manners.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

People, Places, Things - Essays by Elizabeth Bowen Edited and Introduced by Allan Hepburn 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. Allan Hepburn is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. He has also edited The Bazaar and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, published by Edinburgh University Press.

Review Quotes

In these numerous essays that she wrote over forty years for various magazines, Bowen proves to be a very sharp, witty and enthusiastic critic. Alert to the writings as well as the historical events of her time, she illuminates them in her essays just as her essays illuminate her own fiction in return, for our greatest pleasure.--Christine Reynier, Université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier III "Cercles - Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone "

There are delights aplenty, nowhere more so than Bowen's writing on London during World War II... Essays on Jane Austen and reading, reflections on ageing and spirited evocations of post-war European excursions provide an intriguing insight into the mind of a writer Hermione Lee called 'the spy inside the gates' of the English middle classes.--Metro

About the Author

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was a leading Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Her writing was influenced both by Henry James and by modernist writers. She is best known for her novels of the 1930s, her war novel, The Heat of the Day (1949), and her short stories of the London Blitz.

Allan Hepburn is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. He has also edited The Bazaar and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bowen and People, Places, Things: Essays by Elizabeth Bowen, both published by Edinburgh University Press.