"The Demon Lover," in The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen, edited by Hermione Lee, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987, pp. 94-9.

The following excerpt is from Bowen's postscript to the first U.S. edition of The Demon Lover, published in 1946. The author here suggests that the stories of The Demon Lover have much in common, which provides a "cumulative and collective meaning that no one of them, taken singly, has by itself." She also describes how the atmosphere in England during World War II contributed greatly to the creation of the stories.

The stories in . . . The Demon Lover, were written in wartime London—between the spring of 1941 and the late autumn of 1944. They were written for the magazines or papers in which they originally appeared. During these last years, I did not always write a story when I was asked for one; but I did not write any story...