Elizabeth Bowen

Lassner, Phyllis

ISBN 10: 0333442547 / ISBN 13: 9780333442548

Published by Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1990

Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # GRP9283275

Synopsis:

This critical biography is part of a series that helps in the reassessment of women's writing in the light of what we understand today. All the books in the series are written by women. This particular title concentrates on the work of the Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen.

From the Back Cover: Elizabeth Bowen is recognized as a major twentieth-century British writer. Her novels, stories, and family history, Bowen's Court, chronicle the impact of Anglo-Irish social and political upheaval on the personal lives and relations of her characters. Her novels of manners, such as The Death of the Heart (1938), expose the fragility of a traditional society in their psychological studies of men and women torn between social convention and personal expression. Her celebrated World War II fictions - the novel The Heat of the Day (1949) and stories such as "Mysterious Kor" - dramatize the tenuous psychological controls of people caught in the chaos of war. Bowen's acute analysis of individual and social psychology resonate in the works of such contemporary writers as Anita Brookner and Eudora Welty. In this first comprehensive study of Bowen's short stories, Phyllis Lassner lucidly and concisely examines Bowen's major themes and concerns. Characterized by their immediacy and what they suggest rather than state, the stories in Encounters and The Collected Stories, among others, reveal Bowen's lifelong attention to women's roles. Although closely related to the novels, the stories are distinct in their artistic achievement. In her discussions of such masterworks as "The Disinherited Summer Night" and "The Happy Autumn Fields", Lassner reveals that Bowen's most effective stories are those in which she has subtly inserted wry critiques of the role of traditional social codes in the formation of gender. This much-needed study of the short fiction includes excerpts from Bowen's own statements on writing as well as an excellent sampling of critical approaches to her work.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Elizabeth Bowen
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Limited
Publication Date: 1990
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good