Elizabeth Bowen Society Annual Birthday Lecture - Jessica Gildersleeve

Christmas at Bowen's Court: Elizabeth Bowen's Christmas Ghost Stories

'Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres, Jerome K. Jerome famously introduced his 1891 anthology of Christmas ghost stories. Elizabeth Bowen is famous for her ghost stories, several of which are set during the yuletide season. Drawing on the close relationship between Christmas and Bakhtin's carnival, this paper will discuss the range of Bowen's Christmas ghost stories in the context of Christmas Gothic and Christmas horror. It considers the nature of gift-giving, of celebration, and family connection, but also of the way in which Christmas is a time of repetition and remembrance. 'I believe in God and ghosts!' Bowen herself once said (qtd in MacCarthy 39) - this paper considers how they work alongside one another in Bowen's Christmas canon, and how these stories contribute to the history of Christmas Gothic.

Jessica Gildersleeve FHEA is Professor of English Literature and Associate Head of School (Research) at the University of Southern Queensland, where she leads research programs in both the Centre for Heritage and Culture and the Centre for Health Research. She is the author and editor of several books, including Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma: The Ethics of Survival (Brill 2014) and Elizabeth Bowen: Theory, Thought, and Things (2019). She is also the President of the Australian University Heads of English, co-editor of the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, and co-series editor of Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women's Writing.