The Death of the Heart

The Death of the Heart
First US edition
AuthorElizabeth Bowen
LanguageEnglish
PublisherKnopf
Publication date
1938
Media typePrint (hardcover)

The Death of the Heart is a 1938 novel by Elizabeth Bowen set in the interwar period.[1] It is about a sixteen-year-old orphan, Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Thomas and falls in love with Eddie, a friend of her sister-in-law.

Bowen called it a 'pre-war' novel, "a novel which reflects the time, the pre-war time with its high tension, its increasing anxieties, and this great stress on individualism. People were so conscious of themselves, and of each other, and of their personal relationships because they thought that everything of that time might soon end."[2]

  1. ^ Yardley, Jonathan (27 August 2005). "Elizabeth Bowen's 'Heart' Doesn't Miss a Beat". The Washington Post.
  2. ^ Bowen, speaking to V.S.Naipaul on TV programme, Bookstand