Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen (June 7, 1899 - February 22, 1973) was an Irish novelist and short story writer. Bowen was born in Dublin but when her father became mentally ill in 1907, she and her mother moved to London. After her mother died in 1912, Bowen was brought up by her aunts.

She was educated at Doune House, Kent, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Oxford. She mixed with the Bloomsbury group, becoming good friends with Rose Macauley, who helped her find a publisher for her first book, Encounters (1923).

Bowen inherited her family home, Bowen's Court in County Cork, in 1930, but remained in England until she was posted to Dublin by the British Ministry of Information in 1940. Her work entailed sending back reports on Irish opinion of the war. She finally moved to Bowen's Court in 1952, but the house was knocked down seven years later. Bowen died in London.

Selected works

Novels

• Encounters (1923)
• 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 (1936)
• The Heat of the Day (1949)
• A World of Love (1955)
• The Little Girls (1964)
• The Good Tiger (1965)
• Eva Trout (1968)

Short stories

• Ann Lee's and Other Stories (1926)
• Joining Charles and Other Stories (1929)
• The Cat Jumps and Other Stories (1934)
• The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)
• Stories by Elizabeth Bowen (1959)
• A Day in the Dark and Other Stories (1965)

Non-fiction

• Look At All Those Roses (1941)
• Bowen's Court (1942)
• Seven Winters: Memories of a Dublin Childhood (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: A Centre in Dublin Life for More Than A Century (1951)
• A Time in Rome (1960)
• Afterthought: Pieces About Writing (1962)
• The Mulberry Tree (1999).

References

• Elizabeth Bowen at Irish Writers Online (http://www.irishwriters-online.com/elizabethbowen.html)
• Elizabeth Bowen at the Princess Grace Irish Library (http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/b/Bowen,Elizabeth/life.htm)