Elizabeth Bowen Bibliography

Works by Elizabeth Bowen

Novels

  • The Hotel (1927)
  • The Last September (1929)
  • Friends and Relations (1931)
  • To the North (1932)
  • The House in Paris (1935)
  • The Death of the Heart (1938)
  • The Heat of the Day (1949)
  • A World of Love (1955)
  • The Little Girls (1964)
  • Eva Trout (1968)

Short story collections

  • Encounters (1923)
  • Ann Lee's and Other Stories (1926)
  • Joining Charles and Other Stories (1929)
  • The Cat Jumps and Other Stories (1934)
  • Look at All Those Roses (1941)
  • The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)
  • Ivy Gripped the Steps and Other Stories (1946)
  • Stories by Elizabeth Bowen (1959)
  • A Day in the Dark and Other Stories (1965)
  • The Good Tiger (1965, children's book) - illustrated by M. Nebel (1965 edition) and Quentin Blake (1970 edition)
  • Elizabeth Bowen’s Irish Stories (1978)
  • The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (1980)
  • The Bazaar and Other Stories (2008) - edited by Allan Hepburn

Nonfiction

  • Bowen's Court (1942, 1964)
  • Seven Winters: Memories of a Dublin Childhood (1942)
  • English Novelists (1942)
  • Anthony Trollope: A New Judgement (1946)
  • Why Do I Write?: An Exchange of Views between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene and V.S. Pritchett (1948)
  • Collected Impressions (1950)
  • The Shelbourne (1951)
  • A Time in Rome (1960)
  • Afterthought: Pieces About Writing (1962)
  • Pictures and Conversations (1975), edited by Spencer Curtis Brown
  • The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen (1999), edited by Hermione Lee
  • "Notes on Éire": Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill by Elizabeth Bowen, 1940–1942 (2008), edited by Jack Lane and Brendan Clifford
  • People, Places, Things: Essays by Elizabeth Bowen (2008) - edited by Allan Hepburn
  • Love's Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie: Letters and Diaries, 1941–1973 (2009), edited by Victoria Glendinning and Judith Robertson
  • Listening In: Broadcasts, Speeches, and Interviews by Elizabeth Bowen (2010), edited by Allan Hepburn
  • Elizabeth Bowen's Selected Irish Writings (2011), edited by Éibhear Walshe
  • The Weight of a World of Feeling: Reviews and Essays by Elizabeth Bowen (2016), edited by Allan Hepburn

Selected secondary sources 

These sources are either wholly or partly about Bowen’s work. This is a list in progress, and we are aware of other items that need adding, including articles from the Elizabeth Bowen Review. We would love to hear suggestions for inclusion here – please contact us at info@bowensociety.com

Atkins, J. 1977. Six Novelists Look at Society: An Enquiry into the Social Views of Elizabeth Bowen, L.P. Hartley, Rosamond Lehmann, Christopher Isherwood, Nancy Mitford, C.P. Snow. London: John Calder (Publishers) Limited.

Austin, A. 1989. Elizabeth Bowen. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Barreca, R. 1994. Untamed and Unabashed: Essays on Women and Humour in British Literature. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Baxendale, J. and Pawling, C. 1996. Narrating the Thirties : A Decade in the Making: 1930 to the Present. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Limited

Bellman, The. 1942. “Meet Elizabeth Bowen” in The Bell. Volume 4, Number 6 pp.420-427.

Bennett, A. and Royle, N. 1995. Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Limited.

Blodgett, H. 1975. Patterns of Reality: Elizabeth Bowen's Novels. The Hague: Mouton & Co N.V.

Breen, J. 1990. In Their Own Write: Twentieth Century Women’s Fiction. London: Macmillan Educational Press.

Brooke, J. 1952. Elizabeth Bowen. London: Longmans Green and Co.

Byatt, A.S. 1976. “Introduction” in E. Bowen. The House in Paris. London: Penguin Books Limited, pp.7-16.

Calder, R.L. 1994. “‘A More Sinister Troth’: Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” as Allegory” in Studies in Short Fiction Volume 31, Winter 1994, No.1, pp.91-97.

Caserio, R.L. 1993. “Narrative in Paul de Man and Elizabeth Bowen” in Modern Language Quarterly 1993 54:2 pp.263-284.

Chessman, H. 1983. “Women and Language in the Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen” in Twentieth Century Literature. 1983, Volume 29:1, pp.69-85.

Christensen, L. 2001. Elizabeth Bowen: The Later Fiction. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Coates, J. 1990. “Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September: The Loss of the Past and the Modern Consciousness” in The Durham University Journal. July 1990, Volume 82, No.2, pp.205-216.

————— 1992. “The Tree of Jesse and the Voyage Out : Stability and Disorder in Elizabeth Bowen's Friends and Relations”. Durham University Journal, 84:2, pp.291-302.

————— 1998. Social Discontinuity in the Novels of Elizabeth Bowen: The Conservative Quest. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press.

Coles, R. 1974. Irony in the Mind’s Life: Essays on Novels by James Agee, Elizabeth Bowen and George Eliot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Corcoran, N. 1997. After Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

————— 2003. “A Ghost of Style: The Aftermath of Anglo-Ireland in Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love” in English: The Journal of the English Association 2003, Volume 52, Number 203, pp.125-137.

————— 2004. Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Coughlan, P. 1997. “Women and Desire in the work of Elizabeth Bowen”. In E. Walshe (ed). 1997. Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing. New York: St Martins.

Coulson, V. 2020. Elizabeth Bowen’s Psychoanalytic Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Craig, P. 1986. Elizabeth Bowen. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

Crossland, M. 1981 Beyond the Lighthouse: English Women Novelists in the Twentieth Century. London: Constable and Company Limited.

Curtis Brown, S. 1975. “Foreword” in Bowen, E. 1975. Pictures and Conversations, pp. vii-xlii.

Davy, C. 1937. “Contributors’ Who’s Who” in Davy, Charles (ed) 1937 Footnotes to the Film. London: Lovat Dickson Ltd, p.334.

Deane, P. 1998. History in Our Hands: A Critical Anthology of Writings on Literature, Culture and Politics from the 1930s. London: Leicester University Press.

Deane, S. 1996. A Short History of Irish Literature. London: Hutchinson and Co (Publishers) Ltd.

Dostal, R.M. 1964. Innocence and Knowledge in the Novels of Elizabeth Bowen. Unpublished thesis.

Ellmann, M. 2003. Elizabeth Bowen: The Shadow Across the Page. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Fisk, R. 1983. In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the price of neutrality 1939 – 1945. London: André Deutsch Ltd.

Foster, R.F. 1993. Paddy & Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.

Foster, R.F. 1998. “Introduction” in E. Bowen 1948 (1998). The Heat of the Day. London: Vintage, pp.1-6.

Gaston, A. 2021. Modernist Short Fiction and Things. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gildersleeve, J. & Smith, P.J. 2019. Elizabeth Bowen: Theory, Thought and Things. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.  

Gindin, J. 1992. British Fiction in the 1930s: The Dispiriting Decade. New York: St Martin's Press Inc.

Glendinning, V. 1977 (1993). Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer. London: Phoenix.

Hall, J. 1968. The Lunatic in the Drawing Room: The British and American Novel since 1930. London: Indiana University Press.

Hanson, C. 1985. Short Stories & Short Fictions 1880-1980. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.

Hartley, J. 1997 Millions Like Us: British Women's Fiction of the Second World War. London: Virago Press.

Heath, W. 1961. Elizabeth Bowen: An Introduction to Her Novels. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Hepburn, A. 2005. Intrigue: Espionage and Culture: New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

————— 2009. “Trials and Errors: The Heat of the Day and Postwar Culpability” in K. Bluemel (ed) Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp131-147.

Homans, M. 1994. “Feminist Fictions and Feminist Theories of Narrative” in Narrative, 1994, Volume 2, pp.3-16.

Hoogland, R.C. 1994 Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing. New York: New York University Press.

Humble, N. 2001. The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity and Bohemianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ingman, H. 2021. Elizabeth Bowen (Key Irish Women Writers). Brighton: Edward Everett Root.

Ingman, H. 1998. Women's Fiction Between the Wars: Mothers, Daughters and Writing, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Jordan, H.B. 1992. How Will the Heart Endure: Elizabeth Bowen and the Landscape of War. Michegan: University of Michegan Press.

Kenney, E.J. 1975. Elizabeth Bowen. New Jersey and London: Associated University Presses.

Kiberd, D. 1992. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage.

Kreilkamp, V. 2009. “Bowen: Ascendancy Modernist” in E. Walshe (ed) Elizabeth Bowen. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp.12-26.

Lane, J. and Clifford, B. 1999. Elizabeth Bowen: ‘Notes on Eire’, Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940-2; With a Review of Irish Neutrality in World War 2. Aubane: Aubane Historical Society.

Lane, J. 1999a. “Introduction” in Elizabeth Bowen: ‘Notes on Eire’, Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940-2; With a Review of Irish Neutrality in World War 2, pp.5-10.

————— 1999b. “An Attempt to Discredit” in Elizabeth Bowen ‘Notes on Eire’ Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940-2 with a Review of Irish Neutrality in World War 2, pp.125-146.

Lanser, S. S. 1992. Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Lassner, P. 1990. Elizabeth Bowen. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education Ltd.

————— 1991. Elizabeth Bowen: A Study of the Shorter Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers.

————— 1998. British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of their Own. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd.

Lassner, P. and Derdiger, P. 2009. “Domestic Gothic, the Global Primitive, and Gender Relations in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September and The House in Paris” in M. McGarrity and C.A. Culleton. (eds) Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp195-214.

Laurence, P. 2019. Elizabeth Bowen: A Literary Life. Palgrave Macmillan.

Lee, H. 1981 (1999). Elizabeth Bowen. London: Vintage.

Levy, H. 2020. Reconsidering Elizabeth Bowen’s Shorter Fiction: Dead Reckoning. Lexington Books.

Maslen, E. 2001. Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1968. Houndmills: Palgrave.

Medoff, J. 1984. “‘There is no elsewhere’: Elizabeth Bowen’s Perceptions of War” in Modern Fiction Studies1984 Spring 30:1, pp.73-81.

O’Brien, T. 1987. “Light and Enlightenment in Elizabeth Bowen’s Irish Novels” in Ariel, 1987, Volume 18, April, pp.47-62

O’Faolain, S. 1942. “New Wine in Old Bottles” in The Bell. Volume 4:6, pp.381-388.

————— 1956 (1971). The Vanishing Hero: Studies in Novelists of the Twenties. Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press.

O’Toole, T. 2009. “Angels and Monsters: Embodiment and Desire in Eva Trout” in E. Walshe (ed) Elizabeth Bowen. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp.162-178.

Osborne, S. 2006a. “Reconsidering Bowen” in Modern Fiction Studies Spring 2006, Volume 52, Number 1, pp.187-197.

————— 2006b. “Call for Papers: Upcoming Special Issue: Elizabeth Bowen” in Modern Fiction StudiesSpring 2006, Volume 52, Number 1, p.260.

Parish, P. 1973. “A Loss of Eden’: Four Novels of Elizabeth Bowen” in Critique 1973 Volume XV, Number 1, pp.86-100.

Parsons, D.L. 1997. “Souls Astray: Elizabeth Bowen's Landscape of War”. Women: A Cultural Review. Spring1997, pp.24-32.

Ritchie, C. 1974. The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad: 1937-1945. Toronto: MacMillan of Canada.

————— 1981. Diplomatic Passport: More Undiplomatic Diaries 1946 – 1962. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd.

————— 1983. Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries 1962 – 1971. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd.

Rose, J. 2000. “Bizarre Objects: Mary Butts and Elizabeth Bowen” in Critical Quarterly, Volume 42, number 1, pp.75-85.

Rule, J. 1976. Lesbian Images. London: Peter Davies Limited.

Sellery, J.M. and Harris, W.O. 1981. Elizabeth Bowen: A Bibliography. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin.

Tylee, C. M. 2009. “Hyphenated Identity in the “Woman’s Novel”: Racisms and Betty Miller’s Farewell Leicester Square” in R. Hackett, F. Hauser and G. Wachman (eds) At Home and Abroad in the Empire: British Women Write the 1930s. Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp.119-136.

Walshe, E. 2009. “A Time for Hard Writers” in E. Walshe (ed) Elizabeth Bowen. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp.95-109.

————— Walshe E. (2009) “A Sort of Lunatic Giant” in E. Walshe (ed) Elizabeth Bowen. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp.150-161.

Wills, C. 2009. “ ‘Half Different’: The Vanishing Irish in A World of Love” in E. Walshe (ed) Elizabeth Bowen. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp.133-149.

Wordsworth, A. 1995. “Foreword” in A. Bennett and N. Royle 1995a. Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel, pp.vii-viii.

Wyatt-Brown, A. 1993. “The Liberation of Mourning in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Little Girls and Eva Trout” in A. Wyatt-Brown and J. Rossen (eds) Aging and Gender in Literature: Studies in Creativity. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, pp.164-186.