Reconsidering Elizabeth Bowen's Shorter Fiction

Reconsidering Elizabeth Bowen's Shorter Fiction: Dead Reckoning focuses on Elizabeth Bowens representations of violence against the self and others. Heather Levy examines the complicity of landscape and the implications of mayhem, murder, and suicide in The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (2006) edited by Angus Wilson and The Bazaar and Other Stories (2008) edited by Alan Hepburn. It introduces five previously unpublished short story fragments and two nearly complete stories from The Elizabeth Bowen Collection at The Harry Ransom Research Center. Levy argues that Bowens shorter fiction is a quixotic celebration of moral transgression, crime without punishment, and suicide without mourners. Bowens compassionate response to offenders and violence anticipated the Perpetrator Trauma movement in the United States. Her innovations with the freedom of the short story produced an uncanny narration of violence. This book integrates the entirety of the scholarship on Bowens short stories in a clear and original manner and offers a synthetic and compelling excavation of Bowens unpublished short stories.