Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was a leading Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Her writing was influenced both by Henry James and by modernist writers. She is best known for her novels of the 1930s, her war novel, The Heat of the Day (1949), and her short stories of the London Blitz.

Allan Hepburn is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. He has also edited The Bazaar and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bowen and People, Places, Things: Essays by Elizabeth Bowen, both published by Edinburgh University Press.