Elizabeth Bowen, an Estimation

by Hermione Lee

This critical estimation of Bowen's work finds her witty, stylish treatment of manners and emotions to have an austere basis in her critique of the English middle classes. It also considers her achievement as a critic and a historian.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Hermione Lee grew up in London and was educated at Oxford. She began her academic career as a lecturer at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va (Instructor, 1970-1971) and at Liverpool University (Lecturer, 1971-1977). She taught at the University of York from 1977, where over twenty years she was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of English Literature. From 1998-2008 she was the Goldsmiths' Chair of English Literature and Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford. In 2008 Lee was elected President of Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's and St Cross Colleges, Oxford. She has Honorary Doctorates from Liverpool and York Universities. In 2003 she was made a Commander of the British Empire for Services to Literature.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a critical appraisal of the work of Elizabeth Bowen. Bowen is an author I have loved for a long while and so I was happy to read this, in-depth, look at her writing.

This opens with a consideration of her background, and her early life, as an Anglo-Irish author, before moving on to her early work, short stories, work written during the Second World War and her later books. Lee is suitably enthusiastic about Bowen to make you wish to discover any books/stories which the reader has not yet read. She also makes the good point that Bowen has been neglected partly due to the length of her work, which covers the period of the early twenties, right up to the mid-seventies. Also, unlike many authors of the thirties, she was more conservative politically. However, her sharp eye for atmosphere was excellent and, although she was not always consistent; at her best, she is brilliant.

It would have been nice, if Lee had tied up her work with - even a brief - biography, to show what was going on in her life at the time she was writing a particular novel. However, this has made me wish to read a full biography of her life and to read more of her work. Slowly, over the years, Bowen's work has become more and more important to me and she has become a firm favourite, whose work I continually return to.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I expected this to be more or less a biography. It is not that as far as I could see in the first 25 or so pages. The chapters group Bowen's writing, but the groupings are not chronological. As I read only about half of the first chapter, I cannot say what happens in the rest of them. But that first chapter talks more about the politics of Ireland and the Anglo-Irish. I simply do not have enough interest and patience for such a work.