CRITICISM

Bowen, Elizabeth. “Notes on Writing a Novel.” In Collected Impressions, pp. 249-63. New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950.

Bowen provides her insights on producing successful plots, characters, settings, and dialogue.

Chessman, Harriet S. “Women and Language in the Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen.” Twentieth-Century Literature 29, no. 1 (spring 1983): 69-85.

Maintains that Bowen's writing displays an ambivalent attitude toward the position of female writers within male discourse.

Hopkins, Chris. “Elizabeth Bowen.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 21, no. 2 (summer 2001): 114-51.

Contends that Bowen's work is difficult to categorize since it encompasses an extensive variety of literary influences and a wide range of innovative forms.

Johnson, Toni O'Brien. “Light and Enlightenment in Elizabeth Bowen's Irish Novels.” Ariel: A Review of English Literature 18, no. 2 (April 1987): 47-62.

Examination of Bowen's use of light and dark imagery in her Irish novels.

Kemp, Sandra. “But One Isn't Murdered: Elizabeth Bowen's The Little Girls.” In Twentieth-Century Suspense: The Thriller Comes of Age, edited by Clive Bloom, pp. 130-42. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Macmillan, 1990.

Argues that The Little Girls utilizes all the standard conventions of the murder mystery although the novel contains no murder and no solution to the mystery.

Lee, Hermione. Introduction to The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen, pp. 11-13. London: Virago Press, 1986.

Explanation of how the origins of Bowen's fictional characters are apparent in her essays.

McCormack, W. J. “Elizabeth Bowen and The Heat of the Day.” In Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats, and Bowen, pp. 207-40. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1993.

Discussion of Bowen's treatment, in The Heat of the Day, of the individual's identity crisis in relation to the post-war social world.

O'Toole, Bridget. “Three Writers of the Big House: Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, and Jennifer Johnston.” In Across a Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland, edited by Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, pp. 124-38. Belfast, Northern Ireland: The Blackstaff Press, 1985.

Comparison of the “big house” novels of Bowen, Molly Keane, and Jennifer Johnston and their respective treatment of declining patriarchal authority and the social upheaval that accompanies it.

Randall, Phyllis R. “Pinter and Bowen: The Heat of the Day.” In Pinter at Sixty, edited by Katherine H. Burkman and John L. Kundert-Gibbs, pp. 173-82. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Comparison of Bowen's novel The Heat of the Day with Harold Pinter's 1990 adaptation of the work for a two-hour PBS television drama.

Wagner, Geoffrey. “Elizabeth Bowen and The Artificial Novel.” Essays in Criticism 13, no. 1 (January 1963): 155-63.

Claims that Bowen's experimental novels are her least successful, while those devoted to social and moral problems are her best.

Wilson, Angus. Introduction to The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen, pp. 7-11. New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.

Contends that The Heat of the Day and several of Bowen's short stories are unparalleled in their ability to convey with accuracy what life was like during the London blitz.

Additional coverage of Bowen's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: British Writers Supplement, Vol. 2; Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, 1945-1960; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 17-18, 41-44R; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 35, 105; Contemporary Authors Permanent Series, Vol. 2; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 1, 3, 6, 11, 15, 22, 118; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 15, 162; DISCovering Authors Modules: Novelists; DISCovering Authors 3.0; Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Ed. 3; Exploring Short Stories; Feminist Writers; Literature Resource Center; Major 20th-Century Writers, Eds. 1, 2; Novels for Students, Vol. 13; Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Ed. 2; St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers; Short Stories for Students, Vol. 5; Short Story Criticism, Vols. 3, 28, 66; Supernatural Fiction Writers, Vol. 1; Twayne's English Authors; and World Literature and Its Times, Ed. 4.