Elizabeth Bowen, A World of Love

Genevieve Brassard (University of Portland)

Ed. by Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1955

Places

Ireland, Republic of (Eire) (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Elizabeth Bowen’s novel A World of Love has often been described as a failure, or as a dividing point in her prolific career between her most successful books The Death of the Heart (1938) or The Heat of the Day (1949), and the puzzling and ‘experimental’ The Little Girls (1963) and Eva Trout (1968). Biography may offer a clue here: A World of Love was written in the shadow of marital grief, as Bowen’s husband Alan Cameron died in 1952. The setting, an Irish ‘Big House’ that has seen better days, also returns Bowen imaginatively to the Ireland of the ancestral home, Bowen’s Court, which she would reluctantly have to sell in 1960. A slimmer volume than most of Bowen’s f…

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693 words

Citation: Brassard, Genevieve. "A World of Love". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 May 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10664, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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