Bowen Elizabeth. The Bazaar and Other Stories

Edinburgh University Press, 2008. – 384 p.Toward the end of her life, Elizabeth Bowen claimed that "a story deals in the not-yet-thought-of but always possible." Playing with a range of circumstances broken engagements, encounters with ghosts, brushes with crime the stories in this collection demonstrate the virtuosity of technique that characterized all of Bowen's writing.
"The Lost Hope" ranks with the best of her war stories, shattering the lives of soldiers and civilians alike and capturing the cancelled promise of a generation that came of age in the 1940s. The war can also clear a path to the future, as in "Comfort and Joy" and "The Last Bus." Bowen's characters are gripped by intense circumstances and respond either ardently or ironically or both, as in "Flowers Will Do." Sometimes the children in these stories are too wise for their age, such as the punctual protagonist of "The Unromantic Princess," and the adults occasionally behave with no insight at all. Bowen's humor ranges from the sardonic to the light-hearted. In the collection's title story, "The Bazaar," Captain Winch begs for pins, ultimately stealing them, while Lady Hottenham gives an impromptu speech that drifts agonizingly into cliché.
The fairy tales, fables, and social dramas of this volume were never published together during Bowen's lifetime, and a few exist only in unfinished draft. With this collection, Bowen's gift with keen social observation is remarkably on display, echoing the keen eye of D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.AcknowledgementsUncollected Short Stories
Salon des Dames
Moses
“Just Imagine...”
The Pink Biscuit
Flavia
She Gave Him
Brigands
The Unromantic Princess
Comfort and Joy
The Good Earl
The Lost Hope
I Died of Love
So Much Depends
Emergency in the Gothic Wing
The Claimant
Candles in the Window
Happiness
Unpublished and Unfinished Short Stories
The Bazaar
Miss Jolley Has No Plans for the Future
The Man and the Boy
Story Scene
Flowers Will Do
The Last Bus
Fairies at the Christening
Christmas Games
Home for Christmas
Ghost Story
Women in Love
Notes
Works Cited