Please recommend writers like Elizabeth Bowen

[Dappy777]

I have just finished my first Elizabeth Bowen and really enjoyed it. I think I will work my way through her other stuff as well. Can anyone recommend a similar writer? It's going to be like my Iris Murdoch obsession all over again – I will read all her novels and then be miserable that the author is dead and gone and will never publish anything else.😟

Molly Keane

And maybe Ivy Compton-Burnett

Rosamund Lehmann

Which book did you read OP?

Elizabeth Taylor?

The Last September. I am a sucker for country houses, cocktails and upper class speech. I know I'm betraying my working class ancestors, but there you go. Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Oscar Wilde, P G Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf...I am ashamed of myself!!😞

Thanks for the recommendations everyone x

Mollie Panter Downes?

Have a good look at the Rather Dated threads on the MN Books forum.
Also Persephone Books list of reprinted novels.

E M Delafield - The Diary of a Provincial Lady
F Tennyson Jess - A Pin to See the Peepshow
Elizabeth von Arnim - Enchanted April
E H Young - Chatterton Square or Miss Mole
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm

Yes, please do join us, OP:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5029141-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Elizabeth Taylor
Barbara Pym

Nancy Mitford? I find her novels very funny.

Ah, yes, good choice. She has been on my to-read list for a while – especially Love in a Cold Climate

Definitely read Nancy Mitford, has all the elements, plus like the last September has brilliant brilliant dialogue.

i capture the castle, has similar vibes though different location and subject!

if you want to stay Irish, try The Real Charlotte - a dream.

avoiding the dated book club until I finish my current job (also the chalet school threads) as then I am going to hurl myself into them!

Definitely Nancy Mitford!

Trollope.
Ford Maddox Ford.
Mary Wesley

I would second the recommendations for Rosamund Lehmann and Elizabeth Taylor, and add Rumer Godden (of a similar era and style).

Definitely the wonderful Elizabeth Taylor. I'll also suggest Rebecca West.

Slightly more left-field, but potentially very interesting, is Dorothy Richardson - 25 years or so Bowen's senior, and one of the earliest to write in the stream-of-consciousness style. Her 13-volume Pilgrimage series ran from 1915 to 1967 and drew on her own life.

I have just added The Enchanted April to my reading list. Thankyou for the recommendation😁

Yes, Madox Ford has been on my to-read pile for years. The TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent.

You may find this useful @Dappy777

Great recommendations-I love all these and they fit OP's bill!

There’s no one like Bowen (happily, you have her masterpiece, The House in Paris, still to come, as well as another Big House novel, A World of Love, plus her astonishing WW2 work) but you might like other Irish Big House novels. Virtually all of Molly Keane’s output, though they get more blackly satirical in her old age — her 30s and 40s work might be more what you’re looking for.

This a decent overview on BH novels by women. A particular recommendation as from a PP for Somerville and Ross’s The Real Charlotte. Also, George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin.

Elizabeth Goudge has a huge following. I now find her religious approach unappealing but her novels nevertheless are engrossing. I remain fond of The Dean’s Watch.

Great choices! Also Elizabeth Jane Howard and Penelope Lively.