Elizabeth Bowen and Eudora Welty: Selected Correspondence

Over her career, Elizabeth Bowen published ten novels, yet she left no comprehensive theory of the novel. This essay draws especially upon ‘Notes on Writing a Novel’ (1945), ‘The Technique of the Novel’ (1953), and ‘Truth and Fiction’ (1956), as well as opinions that Bowen expressed in her weekly book columns for The Tatler, to formulate her key perceptions of, and rules for, writing a novel. Bowen defined her ideas by drawing upon the empirical evidence of novels by Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia Manning, H.E. Bates, Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and numerous others. She gave particular thought to ‘situation’, by which she means the central problematic or the crux of the story. The situation precedes and fuels plot. The Second World War, Bowen claimed in her essays and reviews, had a decisive influence on heroism and contemporary fiction by heightening its scale and its repertory of situations.

‘Homesick for the North American Continent’: Elizabeth Bowen's Postwar Transatlantic Crossings

This article investigates the influence of North America on Bowen's later work. After the war, Bowen traveled to America, at least once a year, until her last illness. Yet her time in the United States has often been overlooked. In the States, she lectured at colleges and universities across the country, and taught at several prestigious schools. She also wrote articles and essays for the more lucrative American journals and periodicals. In addition to touring the country, she was able to see her many American friends, such as Eudora Welty, and her publishers, the Knopfs, as well as her lover, Charles Ritchie. This new continent allowed Bowen to confront old traumas on new grounds, especially in the American element of Eva Trout, in which she displaces the central question of the relationship between mother and child onto American soil to interrogate the (literally, in Jeremy's case) unspeakable nature of trauma.