Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen was born in Dublin and spent her early childhood years between her family's town residence and their family home, Bowen's Court, Co. Cork. She enroled at the London County Council School of Art in 1918, but abandoned her endevaour to perfect her drawing after two terms in favour of what was to become a prolific writing career. Her painter's sensitivity, however, remains apparent in her literary style. Her second novel, The Last September (1929), draws on her own experience of orphanhood, boarding school abroad, and the demise of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy in the wake of the Irish struggle for independence. In recognition of her work, she received honorary Doctorates in Literature by Trinity College, Dublin (1949) and the University of Oxford (1956). She was also awarded the CBE and made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973 and is buried in Farahy churchyard, close to Bowen's Court.