Böcker av Elizabeth Bowen

An immaculate portrait of adolescent love from one of our most beloved novelists. 'One of the last century's greatest woman writers' GuardianWhen sixteen-year-old Portia is orphaned, she is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home.

"In the mild Mediterranean climate of the Italian Riviera, a rebellious young Sydney Warren cautiously tests her newfound freedom, developing an intimate relationship with the charming middle-aged widow Mrs. Kerr that causes rumors and speculation to stir among the wealthy British guests of a luxurious seaside hotel"--

''Bowen''s stories are novels that have been split open like rocks and reveal the glitter of the naked crystals which have formed them'' VogueSELECTED AND WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEYA girl shares her secret den. A couple stroll through a ruined city. A man walks into a ladies'' hat shop. A teacher dreams of killing her pupil.Spanning the 1920s to the post-war years, this new selection brings Elizabeth Bowen''s finest short stories together for the first time. Elegant and subtle, they showcase Bowen''s ability to evoke ineffable emotions - grief, nostalgia, self-consciousness, dread - and combine remarkable psychological insight with vivid settings, from the countryside of Bowen''s native Ireland to the streets of her London home after the Blitz.Encompassing characters from many walks of life and a vast array of moods, these are intricate journeys of domesticity and discovery, of the homely and uncanny, of the mind and body.

The publication of Encounters in1923 launched what would become a luminous forty-year writing career that spanned the advent of modernist literature, the Second World War, and the fraught years preceding the political turmoil of "the Troubles" in Ireland. These gem-like stories display Elizabeth Bowen's uncanny ability to represent un-belonging, dispossession, and the fragility of selfhood. With astonishing literary adroitness and psychological acuity, she depicts the comedy of British class society, the fracturing of external perception, the pervasive influence of suppressed sexuality, and the abiding force of adolescent epiphanies. Her deft use of language to convey the interior atmosphere of her characters' lives renders these tales as moving as they are timeless.

In The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen brilliantly recreates the tense and dangerous atmosphere of London during the bombing raids of World War II.Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose to stay. But for her, the sense of impending catastrophe becomes acutely personal when she discovers that her lover, Robert, is suspected of selling secrets to the enemy, and that the man who is following him wants Stella herself as the price of his silence. Caught between these two men, not sure whom to believe, Stella finds her world crumbling as she learns how little we can truly know of those around us.

A brilliant and much admired novelist, Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) surpassed herself as a writer of short fiction: 'the supreme genius of her time', writes John Banville in his introduction;

A packet of letters, found in an attic, leads a young girl into the world of love. The attic is in Montefort, a corroding country house in County Cork, which harbours a group of people held together by odd ties of kinship or habit, and haunted by the memory of its former owner who was killed in France as a young man.

But its very narrowness is rich in comedy, and it enables Elizabeth Bowen to create two of her most memorable characters - Lady Elfrida, a creature of privilege, and Theodora Thirdman, the gawky and obtrusive adolescent who carries her emotionalism into adult life.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Features seventy-nine stories such as: love stories, ghost stories, stories of childhood, of English middle-class life in the twenties and thirties, and of London during the Blitz.

This selection of Bowen's non-fictional writings includes her wonderfully funny, precise recollections of schooldays and childhood experiences, her brilliant evocations of London in wartime and of the Irish 'big house', and penetrating accounts of some of her most famous contemporaries.

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.

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.

Elizabeth Bowen takes us on a tour through the history of the famous Dublin landmark, the Shelbourne Hotel, in this evocative account of Irish life.

In 1914 they had been eleven years old; Fifty years later, Dinah, beautiful as ever, advertises in the national newspapers to find the other two - Clare, now established with a successful business, and Sheila, a married woman, glossy, chic and correct. What are the revelations - and the dangers - in summoning up childhood?

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. With great wit and insight Elizabeth Bowen's first novel lays bare the intricacies and eccentricities of polite society.