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Bowen in Italy

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Abstract

Elizabeth Bowen's letters, novels, and short stories all attest to her love of Italy, a country that she visited often and one where she experienced excitement, love, grief, sorrow, and occasionally boredom. In ‘Pictures and Conversations’, Bowen explores the importance of the location in her fiction: ‘the locale of the happening [which] always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it’ (PC 37). Italy provided the ‘locale’ for many significant events in her own life: the breaking off of an engagement or the shared experiences of a country providing solace when she and her lover, Charles Ritchie, were apart; when facing both the potential and actual loss of her family home, Bowen’s Court, or when mourning the deaths of Humphry House, her former lover, and her husband, Alan Cameron. This chappter draws on Bowen’s experiences in Italy, placing her writing – in letters, essays, selected early short stories, novels, and her ‘travelogue’, A Time in Rome – within their biographical, bibliographical, and geographical contexts.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 171-180 (9 pages)

Publication milestones

  • E-pub ahead of print - 17/03/2026
  • Published - 17/03/2026

Publication status

Published - 17/03/2026

Place of publication

Cambridge

Publisher

Cambridge University Press, United States, United Kingdom

ISBN (Print)

9781009535991

Chapter Number

17

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/626544

Host publication title

Elizabeth Bowen in Context

Host publication editors

  • Allan Hepburn

Access to documents