Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish author notable for her books about the lives of Irish landed Protestants, as well as her fiction about life in wartime London.

In 1930, Bowen became the first (and only) woman to inherit Bowen's Court, a historic country house near Kildorrery in County Cork, Ireland, but remained based in England, making frequent visits to Ireland. Many writers visited her at Bowen's Court from 1930 onward, including Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Iris Murdoch, and the historian Veronica Wedgwood. For years, Bowen struggled to keep the house going, lecturing in the United States to earn money.

In 1958, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson. She is buried with her husband in St. Colman's churchyard in Farahy, close to the gates of Bowen's Court, where there is a memorial plaque to the author at the entrance to St. Colman's Church, where a commemoration of her life is held annually.

Today’s story, “Hand in Glove,” is a departure from Bowen’s regular short fiction and exhibits her prowess in presenting a ghost story, as well as the psychological tensions that can exist in a houseful of women.  Unlike the strong and independent women in the stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman, Bowen’s portrayal of the women in this story is more akin to that found in a Jane Austen story, with close attention to the attributes of young women seeking husbands with frippery and finery and cunning.

And you’ll want to know….
Benzene is a natural constituent of petroleum and is one of the original elementary petrochemicals.   Michael Faraday, the inventor of electromagnetic machinery in the 19th century, which helped to launch the Industrial Revolution, first isolated and identified benzene in 1825 from the oily residue derived from the production of illuminating gas.  You might wonder, later, what it smells like.

And now, turn down the lights and join us for “Hand in Glove” by Elizabeth Bowen….