A collection of Elizabeth Bowen's, one of Ireland's foremost female writers, novels, dramatized with full casts.
This collection includes:
The Heat of the Day: It's 1942, and suspicions of espionage threaten a wartime love affair. Dramatised by Christopher Fitz-Simon.
The House in Paris: From her deathbed, the sinister Madame Fisher weaves the lives of young Henrietta and Leopold as she manipulated others before them. But who is Karen, the mother who gave Leopold away? Will Madame Fisher reveal her secrets of love, scandal and death? Dramatised by Margaret Steward. The Last September: 1920, Danielstown, County Cork. Lois is poised on the brink of womanhood. She dances and flirts with English officers, but they do not always return from patrols. Dramatised by Nigel Gearing. The Confidant: The 1920s in Cork, when women thought the world was beginning for them. Dramatised by Patricia M Cobey. The Demon Lover: Mrs Drover's nervousness on returning to her London house during the Blitz is compounded by a letter and the reminder of a rendezvous she cannot fully recollect. Dramatised by Christopher Hawes.
Also included is the bonus content Truth and Fiction, in which Elizabeth Bowen herself discusses what a story is.
Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and landowner. She was educated at Downe House School in Kent. Her book Bowen's Court (1942) is the history of her family and their house in County Cork, and Seven Winters (1943) contains reminiscences of her Dublin childhood. In 1923 she married Alan Cameron, who held an appointment with the BBC and who died in 1952. She travelled a good deal, dividing most of her time between London and Bowen's Court, which she inherited.
Elizabeth Bowen is considered by many to be one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century. Her first book, a collection of short stories, Encounters, appeared in 1923, followed by another, Ann Lee's, in 1926. The Hotel (1927) was her first novel, and was followed by The Last September (1929), Joining Charles (1929), another book of short stories, Friends and Relations (1931), To the North (1932), The Cat Jumps (short stories, 1934), The House in Paris (1935), The Death of the Heart (1938), Look at All Those Roses (short stories, 1941), The Demon Lover (short stories, 1945), The Heat of the Day (1949), Collected Impressions (essays, 1950), The Shelborne (1951), A World of Love (1955), A Time in Rome (1960), Afterthought (essays, 1962), The Little Girls (1964), A Day in the Dark (1965) and her last book Eva Trout (1969).
She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin in 1949, and from Oxford University in 1956. In the same year she was appointed Lacy Martin Donnelly Fellow at Bryn Mawr College in the United States. The Royal Society of Literature made her a Companion of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973.
