- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Literary Criticism
Full Description
This first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) reveals a major English writer whose prodigious output included stories of history, romance, and the supernatural. As Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda writes in his Foreword, Bowen may be "the finest British woman writer of the uncanny of the last century," a view that echoes the high regard of cultural historian Edward Wagenknecht, who called her "a literary phenomenon," one whose best work places her alongside such contemporaries as Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier. Publicly acclaimed--known only by a series of pseudonyms (including "Marjorie Bowen")--but privately inscrutable, she was and is a mysterious and complex character.
Drawing for the first time upon archival resources and the cooperation of the Bowen Estate, this book reveals a woman who saw herself as a rationalist and serious historian, but also as a mystic and "dark enchantress of dread." Above all, through a lifetime of domestic storms and creative ecstasy, Bowen worked tirelessly as both a professional writer and a consummate artist, always seeking, as she once confessed, "to find beauty in dark places."
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Michael Dirda
Introduction: "Music at Midnight"
One • "The Music on the Hill": Pagans and Christians
Two • "Painting History": The Historical Romances
Three • "We Human Beings Cannot Endure Too Much Reality": The Ghost Stories
Four • "Curious Happenings": The Short Stories
Five • "Angels of the Darker Drink": The True-Crime Stories of Joseph Shearing
Six • Marjorie Bowen: A Life Within
Appendix I: Biographical Timeline
Appendix II: "Too Much Posturing": Media Adaptations
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
