She frequently appeared on radio and television, especially after the end of World War II, and her lectures and reading engagements often took her far from Dublin and London literary circles, in which she was most at home, to North America and continental Europe. Among her contemporaries she was widely regarded and honored as an author of major reputation. When she died in 1973, there was no question of the place she had earned in the annals of literature. Since her death her achievements have continued to receive praise by critics who have reassessed her work and by publishers who continue to make her books available to each new generation of readers.
Bowen was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 7 June 1899 to parents whose privileged social class still derived both wealth and social position from its English heritage and record of ancestral service in high military and government office in Ireland and England. Her father was Henry Charles Cole Bowen of Bowen's Court in County Cork, a direct descendant of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Bowen, who had received his eighthundred- acre estate in 1653 as a reward for service in Oliver Cromwell's campaign against the Irish.
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