Selected Stories

A teacher dreams of killing her pupil. A man walks into a ladies' hat shop. A ruined family sells their belongings. A girl shares her secret den. Spanning the 1920s to the post-war years, this new selection brings Elizabeth Bowen's finest short stories together for the first time. Elegant and subtle, they showcase Bowen's ability to evoke ineffable emotions - grief, nostalgia, self-consciousness, dread - and combine remarkable psychological insight with vivid settings, from the countryside of Bowen's native Ireland to the streets of her London home after the Blitz. Encompassing characters from many walks of life and a vast array of moods, these are intricate journeys of domesticity and discovery, of the homely and uncanny, of the mind and body. SELECTED AND WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TESSA HADLEY