Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer. Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street. Her parents Henry Charles Cole Bowen and Florence Colley Bowen later brought her to Bowen's Court at Farahy, near Kildorrery, County Cork where she spent her summers. When her father became mentally ill in 1907, she and her mother moved to England, eventually settling in Hythe. After her mother died in 1912, Bowen was brought up by her aunts. She was educated at... Downe House School, under the headship of Olive Willis. After some time at art school in London she decided that her talent lay in writing. She mixed with the Bloomsbury Group, becoming good friends with Rose Macaulay, who helped her find a publisher for her first book, a collection of short stories entitled Encounters . In 1923 she married Alan Cameron, an educational administrator who subsequently worked for the BBC. The marriage has been described as "a sexless but contented union".
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