Selected Stories: Elizabeth Bowen

Selected and with a New Introduction by Tessa Hadley

A girl shares her secret den. A couple stroll through a ruined city. A man walks into a ladies` hat shop. A teacher dreams of killing her pupil.

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.