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Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and land-owner. She travelled a great deal, dividing most of her time between London and Bowen's Court, the family house in County Cork which she inherited. Her first book, a collection of shorts stories, Encounters, was published in 1923. The Hotel (1926) was her first novel. She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin in 1949, and from Oxford University in 1956. The Royal Society of Literature made her a Companion of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973.
From contemporary documents, family records, legend, Elizabeth Bowen has reconstructed the biography of her ancestors, and of Bowen's Court, Cork County, Ireland. Care, affection and reverence have gone into this recreation of generations typical of their times and their class, Anglo-Irish gentry of means and traditions. Exclusive in interest as it may be, much of it is rewarding reading, even beyond the fine portraiture and tasteful writing. Behind the personal record is a record of Ireland over several centuries, the perpetual, persistent struggle for freedom, the great religious controversies, the famine, etc. Outstanding in a long list of Bowens were three, - Henry I, whose apparition was to haunt his wife and who won the land by a hawk's flight; Henry III, who built the grandly conceived, bare, Italianate house; Henry VI, her grandfather, a forceful hard man. A fine piece of work, somewhat specialized in appeal. (Kirkus Reviews)
