Fuses historical and psychoanalytic perspectives to offer a provocative and original analysis of Elizabeth Bowen's fictionThe first major analysis of Elizabeth Bowen's fiction to appear since 2004Substantial, in-depth and distinctive interpretation of her novels and short storiesLiterary analysis informed by biographical, cultural and political contextualisationThis book provides a new account of Bowen's fiction that highlights in particular the force and originality of Bowen's virtually psychoanalytic thinking about development, sexuality and gender. Focusing on the relationship between Bowen's work and the socio-political matrix from which it emerges, Coulson presents a pyschoanalytic literary interpretation informed by biographical, cultural and political contextualisation.

This study offers an authoritative introduction to Bowen's works, revealing both their pleasures for the fiction-addict and their fascinations for the literary critic, theorist, and historian.

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.

The Last Day at Bowen's Court deals with the life of the Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen, her time in London during the Second World War and her 'reporting' on Irish neutrality for the Ministry of Information. At the centre of the novel is her Blitz love affair with the Canadian diplomat, Charles Ritchie, a wartime romance that inspired her most famous novel, The Heat of the Day, a gripping story about espionage and loyalty that became a best-seller. The novel is told from the point of view of Bowen herself, and also from that of her lover Charles Ritchie, her husband Alan Cameron and Ritchie's wife Sylvia. It is set in wartime London, Dublin and North Cork, and deals with the private and public conflicts of love and of national identity in a time of upheaval and liberation. At the centre of the novel is a portrait of Elizabeth Bowen, one of Ireland's most influential writers.

This book provides a new account of Bowen's fiction that highlights in particular the force and originality of Bowen's virtually psychoanalytic thinking about development, sexuality and gender.

Critically acclaimed, this unique and compelling personal biography uncovers the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandparents.

From the legendary poet Oisin to modernist masters like James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Samuel Beckett, Ireland's literary tradition has made its mark on the Western canon. Despite its proud tradition, the student who searches the shelves for works on Irish women's fiction is liabel to feel much as Virginia Woolf did when she searched the British Museum for work on women by women. Critic Nuala O'Faolain, when confronted with this disparity, suggested that "modern Irish literature is dominated by men so brilliant in their misanthropy... [that] the self-respect of Irish women is radically and paradoxically checkmated by respect for an Irish national achievement." While Ann Owen Weekes does not argue with the first part of O'Faolain's assertion, she does with the second. In Irish Women Writers: An Uncharted Tradition, she suggests that it is the critics rather than the writers who have allowed themselves to be checkmated. Beginning with Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800) and ending with Jennifer Johnston's The Railway Station (1980), she surveys the best of the Ireland's female literature to show its artistic and historic significance and to demonstrate that it has its own themes and traditions related to, yet separate from, that of male Irish writers. Weekes examines the work of writers like E.OE. Sumerville and Martin Ross (pen names for cousins Edith Somerville and Violet Martin), Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O'Brien, Mary Lavin, and Molly Keane, among others. She teases out the themes that recur in these writers' works, including the link between domestic and political violence and re-visioning of traditional stories, such as Julia O'Faolain's use of the Cuchulain and Diarmuid and Grainne myths to reveal the negation of women's autonomy. In doing so, she demonstrates that the literature of Anglo- and Gaelic-Irish women presents a unified tradition of subjects and techniques, a unity that might become an optimistic model not only for Irish literature but also for Irish people.

This title is a comprehensive survey of maritime archaeology as seen through the eyes of nearly fifty scholars at a time when maritime archaeology has established itself as a mature branch of archaeology.