This volume collects for the first time essays published in British, Irish, and American periodicals during Bowen's lifetime as well as essays which have never been published before. The essays include Bowen's observations on age, toys, disappointment, writers, and manners.

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Light and Vision: Modern Lighting; The 1938 Academy: An Unprofessional View; Christmas at Bowen's Court; The Light in the Dark; Ecstasy of the Eye; New Waves of the Future; Places: Britain in Autumn; By The Unapproachable Sea; Foreword to 'The Cinque Ports', by Ronald and Frank Jessup; The Idea of France; Paris Peace Conference: 1946. An Impression; Paris Peace Conference - Some Impressions 1; Paris Peace Conference - Some Impressions 2; Paris Peace Conference - Some Impressions 3; Prague and the Crisis; Hungary; Without Coffee, Cigarettes, or Feeling; Coming to London; Regent's Park and St. John's Wood; New York Waiting in my Memory; People: Miss Willis; Paul Morand; Mainie Jellett; Tipperary Woman; Alfred Knopf; Blanche Knopf; Foreword to 'Olive Willis and Downe House', by Anne Ridler; Houses: Opening Up the House; Home for Christmas; Bowen's Court; Ireland: Letter from Ireland; Eire; Ireland Makes Irish; How They Live in Ireland: Conquest by Cheque-Book; Ireland; Introduction to 'The House by the Church-yard', by Sheridan Le Fanu; Things: Toys; Calico Windows; Introduction to 'The ABC of Millinery', by Eva Ritcher; An Enormous Channel of Expectation; The Teakettle; Mirrors Are Magic; On Giving a Present; The Art of Giving; Writers and Books: Jane Austen; Introduction to 'Pride and Prejudice', by Jane Austen; What Jane Austen Means to Me; 'Persuasion'; Introduction to 'No One to Blame'; James Joyce; New Writers; Elizabeth Bowen Introduces Guy de Maupassant; Introduction to 'Tomato Cain and Other Stories', by Nigel Kneale; Introduction to 'Haven: Short Stories, Poems and Aphorisms', by Elizabeth Bibesco; A Matter of Inspiration; Introduction to 'The Stories of William Samson'; Introduction to 'An Angela Thirkell Omnibus'; A Passage to E. M. Forster; Introduction to 'Staying with Relations', by Rose Macaulay; Fairy Tales: Comeback of Goldilocks et al.; Introduction to 'The King of the Golden River', by John Ruskin; Enchanted Centenary of the Brothers Grimm; On Writing: What We Need in Writing; The Short Story in England; Introduction to 'Chance'; Introduction to 'The Observer Prize Stories'; English Fiction at Mid-Century; Rx for a Story Worth the Telling; Preface to 'Critics Who have Influenced Taste'; A Novelist and His Characters; Bowen on Bowen: Autobiographical Note; 'Downe House Scrap-Book 1907-1957'; First Writing; Elizabeth Bowen, of Cork and London; My Best Novel; The Next Book; On Writing 'The Heat of the Day'; Note for 'The Broadsheet on The Heat of the Day'; Miss Bowen on Miss Bowen; Confessions; The Cost of Letters; Portrait of a Woman Reading; On Radio and Cinema: Why I Go to the Cinema; Third Programme; 'Lawrence of Arabia'; Ages and Ages: Modern Girlhood; Teenagers; Mental Annuity; The Case for Summer Romance; The Beauty of Being Your Age; Was It an Art?; Women: For the Feminine Shopper; Enemies of Charm in Women, in Men; Woman's Place in the Affairs of Man; Outrageous Ladies; Arts and Disappointments: A Way of Life; The Forgotten Art of Living; The Fear of Pleasure; The Art of Respecting Boundaries; The Virtue of Optimism; Disappointment (unpublished version); Disappointment; How To Be Yourself - But Not Eccentric; The Thread of Dreams; Notes; Works Cited.

There are delights aplenty, nowhere more so than Bowen's writing on London during World War II... Essays on Jane Austen and reading, reflections on ageing and spirited evocations of post-war European excursions provide an intriguing insight into the mind of a writer Hermione Lee called 'the spy inside the gates' of the English middle classes. Metro In these numerous essays that she wrote over forty years for various magazines, Bowen proves to be a very sharp, witty and enthusiastic critic. Alert to the writings as well as the historical events of her time, she illuminates them in her essays just as her essays illuminate her own fiction in return, for our greatest pleasure. -- Christine Reynier, Universite Paul-Valery-Montpellier III Cercles - Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone There are delights aplenty, nowhere more so than Bowen's writing on London during World War II... Essays on Jane Austen and reading, reflections on ageing and spirited evocations of post-war European excursions provide an intriguing insight into the mind of a writer Hermione Lee called 'the spy inside the gates' of the English middle classes. In these numerous essays that she wrote over forty years for various magazines, Bowen proves to be a very sharp, witty and enthusiastic critic. Alert to the writings as well as the historical events of her time, she illuminates them in her essays just as her essays illuminate her own fiction in return, for our greatest pleasure.