People, Places, Things - Essays by Elizabeth Bowen
Edited and Introduced by Allan Hepburn
Throughout her career, Elizabeth Bowen, the Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer, also wrote literary essays that display a shrewd, generous intelligence. Always sensitive to underlying tensions, she evokes the particular climate of countries and places in "Hungary," "Prague and the Crisis," and "Bowen's Court." In "Britain in Autumn," she records the strained atmosphere of the blitz as no other writer does. Immediately after the war, she reported on the International Peace Conference in Paris in a series of essays that are startling in their evocation of tense diplomacy among international delegates scrabbling to define the boundaries of Europe and the stakes of the Cold War. The aftershock of war registers poignantly in "Opening Up the House": owners evacuated during the war return to their houses empty since 1939. Other essays in this volume, especially those on James Joyce, Jane Austen, and the technique of writing, offer indispensable mid-century evaluations of the state of literature.
The essays assembled in this volume were published in British, Irish, and American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime. She herself did not gather them into any collection. Some of these essays exist only as typescript drafts and are published here for the first time. Bowen's observations on age, toys, disappointment, charm, and manners place her among the very best literary essayists of the modernist period.
Allan Hepburn is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. He has also edited The Bazaar and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, published by Edinburgh University Press.

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was a leading Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Her writing was influenced both by Henry James and by modernist writers. She is best known for her novels of the 1930s, her war novel, The Heat of the Day (1949), and her short stories of the London Blitz.

Allan Hepburn is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. He has also edited The Bazaar and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bowen and People, Places, Things: Essays by Elizabeth Bowen, both published by Edinburgh University Press.

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Light and Vision: Modern Lighting; The 1938 Academy: An Unprofessional View; Christmas at Bowen's Court; The Light in the Dark; Ecstasy of the Eye; New Waves of the Future; Places: Britain in Autumn; By The Unapproachable Sea; Foreword to 'The Cinque Ports', by Ronald and Frank Jessup; The Idea of France; Paris Peace Conference: 1946. An Impression; Paris Peace Conference - Some Impressions 1; Paris Peace Conference - Some Impressions 2; Paris Peace Conference - Some Impressions 3; Prague and the Crisis; Hungary; Without Coffee, Cigarettes, or Feeling; Coming to London; Regent's Park and St. John's Wood; New York Waiting in my Memory; People: Miss Willis; Paul Morand; Mainie Jellett; Tipperary Woman; Alfred Knopf; Blanche Knopf; Foreword to 'Olive Willis and Downe House', by Anne Ridler; Houses: Opening Up the House; Home for Christmas; Bowen's Court; Ireland: Letter from Ireland; Eire; Ireland Makes Irish; How They Live in Ireland: Conquest by Cheque-Book; Ireland; Introduction to 'The House by the Church-yard', by Sheridan Le Fanu; Things: Toys; Calico Windows; Introduction to 'The ABC of Millinery', by Eva Ritcher; An Enormous Channel of Expectation; The Teakettle; Mirrors Are Magic; On Giving a Present; The Art of Giving; Writers and Books: Jane Austen; Introduction to 'Pride and Prejudice', by Jane Austen; What Jane Austen Means to Me; 'Persuasion'; Introduction to 'No One to Blame'; James Joyce; New Writers; Elizabeth Bowen Introduces Guy de Maupassant; Introduction to 'Tomato Cain and Other Stories', by Nigel Kneale; Introduction to 'Haven: Short Stories, Poems and Aphorisms', by Elizabeth Bibesco; A Matter of Inspiration; Introduction to 'The Stories of William Samson'; Introduction to 'An Angela Thirkell Omnibus'; A Passage to E. M. Forster; Introduction to 'Staying with Relations', by Rose Macaulay; Fairy Tales: Comeback of Goldilocks et al.; Introduction to 'The King of the Golden River', by John Ruskin; Enchanted Centenary of the Brothers Grimm; On Writing: What We Need in Writing; The Short Story in England; Introduction to 'Chance'; Introduction to 'The Observer Prize Stories'; English Fiction at Mid-Century; Rx for a Story Worth the Telling; Preface to 'Critics Who have Influenced Taste'; A Novelist and His Characters; Bowen on Bowen: Autobiographical Note; 'Downe House Scrap-Book 1907-1957'; First Writing; Elizabeth Bowen, of Cork and London; My Best Novel; The Next Book; On Writing 'The Heat of the Day'; Note for 'The Broadsheet on The Heat of the Day'; Miss Bowen on Miss Bowen; Confessions; The Cost of Letters; Portrait of a Woman Reading; On Radio and Cinema: Why I Go to the Cinema; Third Programme; 'Lawrence of Arabia'; Ages and Ages: Modern Girlhood; Teenagers; Mental Annuity; The Case for Summer Romance; The Beauty of Being Your Age; Was It an Art?; Women: For the Feminine Shopper; Enemies of Charm in Women, in Men; Woman's Place in the Affairs of Man; Outrageous Ladies; Arts and Disappointments: A Way of Life; The Forgotten Art of Living; The Fear of Pleasure; The Art of Respecting Boundaries; The Virtue of Optimism; Disappointment (unpublished version); Disappointment; How To Be Yourself - But Not Eccentric; The Thread of Dreams; Notes; Works Cited.