Elizabeth Bowen

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Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen (born June 7, 1899 in Dublin , † February 22, 1973 in London ) was an Irish writer .

Life

After her father's mental illness, she moved to England with her mother at the age of seven. Her mother died in 1912 of complications from cancer; Elizabeth was raised by her aunts following the illness and early death of her mother. Her first book, Encounters , was published in 1923. She lived in Dublin from 1940 to 1952, but then moved back to England.

Bowen came from a Protestant Anglo-Irish family who spent summers at Bowen's Court near Cork and winters in Dublin. In addition to her stays at Bowen's Court , Elizabeth Bowen lived mostly in England. Not least because of her origins from the Anglo-Irish upper class, who always saw Ireland as part of the larger English-speaking world, she occupies a special position in Irish literature of the 20th century. Many of her short stories, as well as some of her novels, clearly reflect this intermediate position between the two worlds of Ireland and England, which grew further and further apart during their lives.

The awareness of belonging to a declining class of society shaped her life and work as well as her own precarious family situation, which was characterized by cancer and the early death of her mother, her father's mental crisis, and the sale and demolition of Bowen's Court . In her work she often depicts psychological borderline situations; In the short story Sunday Afternoon from the anthology The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945), the conflict between everyday English reality and the decadent living situation of the Irish aristocracy is exacerbated by the war situation and bombing raids during World War II . The family reunion on the Irish country estate described in this story is determined by the fear, but also the lack of understanding and emotional coldness of the family members. Henry, whose apartment in London was destroyed and barely survived, looks like a stranger from another world.

The focus of Bowen's novels is primarily on the critical examination of the upscale British society, the collapse of which she describes. The deterioration of the social framework is reflected in the world of her narrative characters with restless and aimless figures who often experience crises of meaning and relationships.

Bowen is often compared to Virginia Woolf , with whom she was also friends, and, not least because of the detailed psychological description of her characters, to Jane Austen .

Bowen's works are currently being published in a new German translation by Schöffling-Verlag .

In 1961 she was elected an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works (German editions)

  • The demonic lover, among other things, stories, narratives (1947).
  • To the north (1948) OT To the North (1932).
  • Farewell (1958).
  • A World of Love (1958) OT A World of Love (1955).
  • The Distant City of Kor ', Tales (1985).
  • His only daughter, Roman (1986).
  • Malevolent Men, Stories (1989).
  • The Little Girls, Roman (1998), ISBN 3-458-16239-9 , OT The Little Girls (1964; German 1965).
  • Ivy crawled over the rock - Selected stories (1999), ISBN 3-608-95440-6 .
  • Stories (2000), ISBN 3-7175-1960-3 .
  • The Last September , Novel (2001) ISBN 3-89561-240-5 , OT The Last September (1929).
  • Das Haus in Paris, Roman (2002) ISBN 3-89561-241-3 , OT The House in Paris (1935).
  • The Demonic Lover - Selected Stories, New Edition (2002), ISBN 3-608-95096-6 .
  • The journey to the north, Roman (2003), ISBN 3-89561-242-1 , OT To the North (1932).
  • Kalte Herzen, Roman (2004), ISBN 3-89561-243-X , OT The Death of the Heart (1936).
  • In the Heat of the Day, Roman (2006), ISBN 3-89561-244-8 , OT The Heat of the Day (1949).
  • Summer Night, Stories (2007), ISBN 3-89561-245-6 .

literature

  • Victoria Glendenning, Judith Robertson (editors): Love's Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries 1941–1973. Simon & Schuster 2009.
  • Elsemarie Maletzke : Elizabeth Bowen. A biography . Schöffling Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2008, ISBN 978-3-89561-610-5 .
  • Hermione Lee : Elizabeth Bowen. Portrait of a writer . Translated from the English by Christine Frick-Gerke. Schöffling, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-89561-607-9 .
  • Nicholas Royle ; Andrew Bennett: Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel: Still Lives . London: Macmillan, 1995
  • Sarah Stewart Taylor : Elizabeth Bowen . Dissertation.
  • Victoria Glendinning : Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1977.
  • Patricia Laurence: Elizabeth Bowen: a literary life m Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, Springer International Publishing, [2019], ISBN 978-3-030-26414-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the biographical information in the Encyclopædia Britannica , available online at Elizabeth Bowen, accessed January 23, 2015. See also Elizabeth Bowen . From: encyclopedia.com, accessed January 23, 2015. Likewise, the biography in The Guardian : I Am in Your Keeping, accessed January 23, 2015.
  2. ↑ Heinz Kosock: The Irish short story in the 20th century . In: Arno Löffler, Eberhard Späth (Hrsg.): History of the English short story. Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel 2005, ISBN 3-7720-3370-9 , pp. 246-271, here pp. 262 f.
  3. ↑ Heinz Kosock: The Irish short story in the 20th century . In: Arno Löffler, Eberhard Späth (Hrsg.): History of the English short story. Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel 2005, ISBN 3-7720-3370-9 , pp. 246-271, here p. 263.
  4. ^ Honorary Members: Elizabeth Bowen. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 7, 2019 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bowen, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bowen, Elizabeth Dorothea Cole (full name); Encounters
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1973
Place of death London