Such families were steadfastly connected to Ireland yet also steeped in the narrower cultural traditions of their particular families. Their lives, according to Bowen, were "singular, independent and secretive." The psychological closeness that pervades the best of Bowen's fiction recalls the condition of Anglo-Irish society during her childhood.
Elizabeth was the only child of Henry Cole Bowen and Florence Colley Brown, whom Victoria Glendinning calls two "vague and dreamy people," and thus Bowen added the independence of being an only child to that of living an isolated country life. As a small child Bowen divided her residency between 15 Herbert Place, Dublin, and Bowen's Court. This pattern altered in 1905 when Henry Bowen became more and more withdrawn, eventually suffering a nervous breakdown. His wife was not prepared to deal with this change by herself, so she and Elizabeth began living near cousins in southern England. Glendinning reports that Elizabeth saw these years as a time of "not noticing" harsh problems. She began to insulate herself from stress by paying close attention to place and to her childhood world; she found great solace in imagination.
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