from Part II - Aesthetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2026
Although Elizabeth Bowen is primarily known for her work as a novelist throughout her long career, her prose frequently resembles poetry. She often borrows elements from verse to enhance her fiction. Notably, the three-part greater romantic lyric has an influence on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart in its plying together of past and present, as well as different locations. In her lectures, radio broadcasts, and literary criticism, Bowen was fond of illustrating the craft of fiction with examples from verse. Not only was she an avid reader and reviewer of contemporary poets such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, and May Sarton, but she was also a close friend of many of them. Whenever her work was compared to poetry, she took it as the highest compliment. This essay explores her intertwined connections, both in her language and in her life, to the poets and poetry that surrounded her.
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