The publication of Encounters in1923 launched what would become a luminous forty-year writing career that spanned the advent of modernist literature, the Second World War, and the fraught years preceding the political turmoil of “the Troubles” in Ireland. These gem-like stories display Elizabeth Bowen’s uncanny ability to represent un-belonging, dispossession, and the fragility of selfhood. With astonishing literary adroitness and psychological acuity, she depicts the comedy of British class society, the fracturing of external perception, the pervasive influence of suppressed sexuality, and the abiding force of adolescent epiphanies. Her deft use of language to convey the interior atmosphere of her characters’ lives renders these tales as moving as they are timeless.
