Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandparents – the critically acclaimed biography with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair
For readers who were swept up in Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey and Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting.
A death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of letters. Dusty with age, they reveal a secret love affair between the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the academic Humphry House – Julia’s grandfather.
So begins a life-changing quest to understand the affair, which had profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least her grandmother, Madeline. Julia traces these three very different characters through 1930s Oxford and Ireland, Texas, Calcutta in the last days of Empire, and on into World War II. With a supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf, The Shadowy Third opens up a world with complex attitudes to love and sex, duty and ambition, and to writing itself.
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*More praise for The Shadowy Third*
'A vivid picture of an important and immensely gifted writer in love'JOSEPH O'CONNOR
'As literary discoveries go, it’s a big one'SUNDAY TIMES
'An essay of rare sensitivity and intelligent reflection'TELEGRAPH
'a work of discovery, rebuilding a lost world with imaginative flair'COLM TÓIBÍN
'Fascinating and poetic, a rich evocation'IRISH TIMES
Publisher : Duckworth
Publication date : 25 Feb. 2021
Language : English
Print length : 386 pages
ISBN-10 : 0715653571
ISBN-13 : 978-0715653579
Item weight : 490 g
Dimensions : 22.3 x 3.9 x 14.6 cm
Genre : Women's literary fiction