1. Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)

2.  Born in Dublin on June 7, 1899 to wealthy parents.  lived in Ireland until the age of seven when father suffered a breakdown and was committed to an institution.  Mother died of cancer when she was thirteen and she wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral.  family moved to England  returned to Dublin in 1916 to work in a hospital for World War I veterans  Two years later she moved back to England and enrolled in the London County Council School of Art

3.  In 1923 she married Alan Charles Cameron and published her first collection of short stories  In 1925 Bowen and her husband moved to Oxford  Husband died in 1952  There she wrote her first four novels: The Hotel (1927), The Last September (1929), Friends and Relations (1931), and To the North (1932).

4.  The first two concern the dawning of romantic love in the young, innocent heroines, who eventually become aware of its futility, while the last two concern the destructiveness of illicit love.

5. 5 th Novel--The House in Paris  Again the theme is the destructiveness of romantic excess. It depicts an affair which results in pregnancy, the suicide of the lover, and the heroine's rejection of her child, though in the end she begins to reconcile herself to the reality of her situation.

6.  In 1938 Bowen published her best-known and perhaps finest novel, The Death of the Heart, about an idealistic young girl whose demands for honesty and openness are met with hostility by her family.