The Furies of Marjorie Bowen

<p> This first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) reveals a major English writer whose prodigious output included stories of history romance and the supernatural. As Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda writes in his Foreword Bowen may be the finest British woman writer of the uncanny of the last century a view that echoes the high regard of cultural historian Edward Wagenknecht who called her a literary phenomenon one whose best work places her alongside such contemporaries as Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier. Publicly acclaimed--known only by a series of pseudonyms (including Marjorie Bowen)--but privately inscrutable she was and is a mysterious and complex character.</p><p> Drawing for the first time upon archival resources and the cooperation of the Bowen Estate this book reveals a woman who saw herself as a rationalist and serious historian but also as a mystic and dark enchantress of dread. Above all through a lifetime of domestic storms and creative ecstasy Bowen worked tirelessly as both a professional writer and a consummate artist always seeking as she once confessed to find beauty in dark places.</p>