It is an oft-quoted story of May Sarton’s that Elizabeth Bowen’s husband, Alan Cameron, would always pause “before the abstracted gaze of a tiger or panther” at the Regent’s Park zoo to exclaim, “Elizabeth!” (cited in Ellmann p. 32) Despite this apparent uncanny cognisance between Bowen and the zoo’s big cats, in many ways

The Good Tiger

, first published in the United States in 1965 and in the United Kingdom in 1970, seems an odd departure from the arc of Bowen’s body of work. A picture book for children in which a lonely tiger is invited to a tea party by a kind boy and girl, it is, superficially at least, incongruent with the civilised and “adult” matters of Bowen’s other fictional and non-fictional works. And yet, in this short text cohere many of Bowen’s…

1116 words

Citation: Gildersleeve, Jessica. "The Good Tiger". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 May 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10662, accessed 19 March 2024.]

10662 The Good Tiger 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.