The Last September

Description

Genteel life at 'the 'Big House' continues while the Irish War of Independence rages beyond the gates, but for how long? Read Elizabeth Bowen's accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracy WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VICTORIA GLENDINNING The Irish troubles rage, but up at the 'Big House', tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.

Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and land-owner. She travelled a great deal, dividing most of her time between London and Bowen's Court, the family house in County Cork which she inherited. Her first book, a collection of shorts stories, Encounters, was published in 1923. The Hotel (1926) was her first novel. She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin in 1949, and from Oxford University in 1956. The Royal Society of Literature made her a Companion of Literature in 1965. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973.

A book I read only some years ago, and was astonished by its modernity, its formidable intelligence and its punk sensibility, was The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen -- Sebastian Barry * Guardian * A strongly autobiographical portrait of a lost class marking out its final moments - every garden party, every house guest and every flirtation is touched by a sense of impending extinction * Guardian * When I read [The Last September] I was knocked out by the sheer magnificence of her writing, the cinematic possibilities, and her obsession with the minutiae and the detail of life... I was totally gripped by the story * Glasgow Herald * Posterity will one day return to Miss Bowen's novels as a repository of clues to the inner life of our times * Sunday Telegraph * A combination of social comedy and private tragedy...brilliant description of Anglo-Irish life at the troublesome time of 1920 * Times Literary Supplement *