Elizabeth Bowen’s novel
A World of Lovehas 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 Lovewas 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 Loverevisits many of her typical characters in an almost telegraphic style, as if the…
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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 24 April 2024.]
