Elizabeth Bowen was an eminent Anglo-Irish writer whose fiction was strongly influenced both by the aesthetic currents of Modernism and her own powerful sense of place. She is most renowned for her novels of the 1930s, which represent disoriented, disastrously innocent ingénues in the intransigent atmosphere of the upper-middle class drawing room. Her lasting achievement, however, is in her war novel and the short stories about the London Blitz.
Elizabeth Bowen was born at Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland on June 7 1899 as the only child of Florence Colley and Henry Cole Bowen, a barrister. She was the last in a long line of descendants from Colonel Henry Bowen, who came over with Cromwell from the Gower Peninsula to settle …
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Citation: Rau, Petra. "Elizabeth Bowen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 November 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=505, accessed 22 November 2024.]
