Elizabeth Bowen: A Literary Life reinvents Bowen as a public intellectual propagandist spy
cultural ambassador journalist and essayist as well as a writer of fiction. Patricia Laurence
counters the popular image of Bowen as a mannered reserved Anglo-Irish writer and presents her
as a bold independent woman who took risks and made her own rules in life and writing. This
biography distinguishes itself from others in the depth of research into the life experiences
that fueled Bowen's writing: her espionage for the British Ministry of Information in neutral
Ireland 1940-1941 and the devoted circle of friends lovers intellectuals and writers whom
she valued: Isaiah Berlin William Plomer Maurice Bowra Stuart Hampshire Charles Ritchie
Sean O'Faolain Virginia Woolf Rosamond Lehmann and Eudora Welty among others. The biography
also demonstrates how her feelings of irresolution about national identity and gender roles
were dispelled through her writing. Her vivid fiction often about girls and women is laced
with irony about smooth social surfaces rent by disruptive emotion the sadness of beleaguered
adolescents the occurrence of cultural dislocation historical atmosphere as well as
undercurrents of violence in small events and betrayal and disappointment in romance. Her
strong visual imagination-so much a part of the texture of her writing-traces places scenes
landscapes and objects that subliminally reveal hidden aspects of her characters. Though her
reputation faltered in the 1960s-1970s given her political and social conservatism now
readers are discovering her passionate and poetic temperament and writing as well as the
historical consciousness behind her worldly exterior and writing.
