The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters, and Elizabeth Bowen

‘A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity.’ Sarah Waters 
A sudden death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of love letters. Dusty with age, they reveal an illicit affair between the celebrated Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen, and the academic Humphry House - Julia’s grandfather. So begins a life-changing quest to discover and understand this affair, one with profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least her grandmother, Madeline.\nUsing fascinating unpublished correspondence, Julia follows the lives of three very different characters through some of the most dramatic decades of the twentieth century: from the rarefied air of Oxford in the 1930s and the Anglo-Irish Big House, to the last days of Empire in India and into the Second World War. The story opens up a lost world, one with complex and often surprising attitudes to love and sex, work and home, duty and ambition, and to writing itself, spiced throughout with social history and a celebrated supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf.\nInspired by Bowen’s own obsession with place and memory, Julia travels to all the locations in the letters - from Kolkata to Cambridge; from Ireland to Texas weaving present-day storytelling with historical narrative and literary exploration.\nFrom an assured, elegant new voice, The Shadowy Third is a beautifully written investigation of family, love, and the lasting power of literature. Praise for The Shadowy Third 
‘Julia Parry has a fascinating tale to tell, and she does so with a compelling immediacy and also with admirable finesse. Bowen fans will be in her debt; and those interested in the milieux she frequented.’ Peter J. Conradi 
‘The Shadowy Third is the intimate portrait of a love triangle, with the novelist Elizabeth Bowen as one of the protagonists. It is also a work of discovery, using letters with sensitivity and intelligence, rebuilding a lost world with imaginative flair, seeing Bowen and her world with insight, and the lives of Julia Parry’s own grandparents with a sharp eye for detail and a skill at telling a fascinating story.‘ Colm Tóibín, author of The Empty Family 
‘A vivid picture of an important and immensely gifted writer in love.’ Joseph O’Connor 
‘A compelling story of marriage, passion and betrayal that reads like a richly textured novel. With skill, wit, and empathy, Parry takes readers on a compelling journey to find the truth of her grandfather’s love affair with a famous novelist. Gripping, poignant, and fascinating.’ Charlotte Gordon, author of Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley 
Parry is a spirited narrator who is clearly a great admirer of Bowen's fiction but isn't blindsided by this, remaining admirably nuanced as she gives a judicious moment-by-moment account of these complicated characters over the decades.’ Lara Feigel, Spectator 
'Fascinating and poetic.' Ian D’Alton, Irish Times 
‘An essay of rare sensitivity and intelligent reflection… Julia Parry's elegantly written The Shadowy Third uncovers the love triangle that consumed the novelist – and her grandmother.’ Rupert Christiansen, Telegraph 
‘As literary discoveries go, it’s a big one: the discovery in her uncle’s attic by Julia Parry, a secondary school English teacher, of the forgotten correspondence between her grandfather, the literary critic Humphry House, and the famous 20th-century Anglo-Irish novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen. Parry is an engaging writer, deliciously alert to the echoes and parallels that sometimes feel like ancestral instructions on how to approach the material.' Lucy Atkins, The Sunday Times

Biographies & Memoirs

Parry, Julia

Arts & Literature

Duckworth Books

** WINNER OF THE RSL CHRISTOPHER BLAND PRIZE ** 
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‘Astonishingly beautiful, complex and intense. It’s like reading one of Elizabeth Bowen’s great novels' 
RSL CHRISTOPHER BLAND PRIZE 
'Marvellous, gently elegiac, beautifully written, and fascinating' 
JOHN BANVILLE, New York Review of Books 
'A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity' 
SARAH WATERS 
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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. 
––––––––––––\n*More praise for The Shadowy Third*\n'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

The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters, and Elizabeth Bowen – Winner of the RSL Christopher Bland Prize

Duckworth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parry, Julia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Parry, Julia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parry, Julia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters, and Elizabeth Bowen

The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters, and Elizabeth Bowen – Winner of the RSL Christopher Bland Prize