Elizabeth Bowen, A World of Love

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Elizabeth Bowen’s novel

A World of Love

has often been described as a failure, or as a dividing point in her prolific career between her most successful books

The Death of the Heart

(1938) or

The Heat of the Day

(1949), and the puzzling and ‘experimental’

The Little Girls

(1963) and

Eva Trout

(1968). Biography may offer a clue here:

A World of Love

was written in the shadow of marital grief, as Bowen’s husband Alan Cameron died in 1952. The setting, an Irish ‘Big House’ that has seen better days, also returns Bowen imaginatively to the Ireland of the ancestral home, Bowen’s Court, which she would reluctantly have to sell in 1960. A slimmer volume than most of Bowen’s fiction,

A World of Love

revisits many of her typical characters in an almost telegraphic style, as if the…

693 words

Citation: Brassard, Genevieve. "A World of Love". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 May 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10664, accessed 13 October 2024.]

10664 A World of Love 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

Leave Feedback

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