Bowen Elizabeth - Elizabeth Bowen: a reputation in writing

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Elizabeth Bowen

The Cutting Edge:
Lesbian Life and Literature

The Cutting Edge:
Lesbian Life and Literature

Series Editor: Karla Jay

Ladies Almanack
BY DJUNA BARNES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN SNIADER LANSER

Adventures of the Mind:
The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney
TRANSLATED BY JOHN SPALDING GATTON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KARLA JAY

Paint It Today by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)
EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY CASSANDRA LAITY

(Sem)Erotics: Theorizing Lesbian : Writing
BY ELIZABETH A. MEESE

The Search for a Woman-Centered Spirituality
BY ANNETTE J. VAN DYKE

I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 17911840
EDITED BY HELENA WHITBREAD

No Priest but Love: The Journals of Anne Lister, 18241826
EDITED BY HELENA WHITBREAD

Lover
BY BERTHA HARRIS

Changing Our Minds: Lesbian Feminism and Psychology
BY CELIA KITZINGER AND RACHEL PERKINS

Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing
BY RENE C. HOOGLAND

The Cutting Edge:
Lesbian Life and Literature

Series Editor: Karla Jay

Professor of English and Womens Studies Pace University

EDITORIAL BOARD

Judith Butler
Humanities Center
The Johns Hopkins University

Blanche Wiesen Cook
History and Womens Studies
John Jay College and
City University of New York
Graduate Center

Diane Griffin Crowder
French and Womens Studies
Cornell College

Joanne Glasgow
English and Womens Studies
Bergen Community College

Marny Hall
Psychotherapist and Writer

Celia Kitzinger
Social Studies
Loughborough University, U.K.

Jane Marcus
English and Womens Studies
City University of New York
Graduate Center

Biddy Martin
German and Womens Studies
Cornell University

Elizabeth Meese
English
University of Alabama

Esther Newton
Anthropology
SUNY, Purchase

Terri de la Pea
Novelist/Short Story Writer

Ruthann Robson
Writer
Law School, Queens College
City University of New York

Ann Allen Shockley
Librarian
Fisk University

Elizabeth Wood
Lesbian and Gay Studies
Sarah Lawrence College

Bonnie Zimmerman
Womens Studies
San Diego State University

rene c. hoogland

A Reputation in Writing

Grateful acknowledgment for permission to reprint material is made to the following:

From THE LAST SEPTEMBER by Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright 1929, 1952 by Elizabeth Bowen. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen, Jonathan Cape Limited, and Curtis Brown, London.

From THE HEAT OF THE DAY by Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright 1948 by Elizabeth Bowen. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen, Jonathan Cape Limited, and Curtis Brown, London.

From EVA TROUT OR CHANGING SCENES by Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright 1968 by Elizabeth Bowen. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen, Jonathan Cape Limited, and Curtis Brown, London.

From BOWENS COURT and SEVEN WINTERS by Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright 1942. Reprinted by permission of Virago Press Limited.

From Elizabeth Bowen and Jocelyne Brooks [broadcast]; autobiographical note on manuscript; and GIRLHOOD [essay]. Reprinted by permission of The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Austin, Texas.

Extracts from Out of a Book, The Bend Back, The Big House, and Why Do I Write by Elizabeth Bowen. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen and Curtis Brown, London.

Extracts from PICTURES AND CONVERSATIONS by Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright 1975 by Elizabeth Bowen. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, London.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London

Copyright 1994 by New York University
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoogland, Rene C.
Elizabeth Bowen : a reputation in writing / Renee C. Hoogland.
p. cm. (The Cutting edge: lesbian life and literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-3501-0 (cloth).ISBN 0-8147-3511-8 (pbk.)
1. Bowen, Elizabeth, 1899-1973Criticism and interpretation.
2. Lesbians writings, EnglishIrish authorsHistory and criticism. 3. Feminism and literatureIrelandHistory20th century. 4. Women and literatureIrelandHistory20th century. 5. LesbiansIrelandIntellectual life. 6. IrelandIn literature.
I. Title. II. Series: Cutting edge (New York, N.Y.)
PR6003.06757Z672 1994
823.912dc20 93-49675
CIP

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

for Loep

Despite the efforts of lesbian and feminist publishing houses and a few university presses, the bulk of the most important lesbian works has traditionally been available only from rare-book dealers, in a few university libraries, or in gay and lesbian archives. This series intends, in the first place, to make representative examples of this neglected and insufficiently known literature available to a broader audience by reissuing selected classics and by putting into print for the first time lesbian novels, diaries, letters, and memoirs that are of special interest and significance but that have moldered in libraries and private collections for decades or even for centuries, known only to the few scholars who had the courage and financial wherewithal to track them down.

Their names have been known for a long timeSappho, the Amazons of North Africa, the Beguines, Aphra Behn, Queen Christina, Emily Dickinson, the Ladies of Llangollen, Radclyffe Hall, Natalie Clifford Barney, H.D., and so many others from every nation, race, and era. But government and religious officials burned their writings, historians and literary scholars denied they were lesbians, powerful men kept their books out of print, and influential archivists locked up their ideas far from sympathetic eyes. Yet some dedicated scholars and readers still knew who they were, made pilgrimages to the cities and villages where they had lived and to the graveyards where they rested. They passed around tattered volumes of letters, diaries, and biographies, in which they had underlined what seemed to be telltale hints of a secret or different kind of life. Where no hard facts existed, legends were invented. The few precious and often available pre-Stonewall lesbian classics, such as