Elizabeth Bowen Society Reading Group - The Shelbourne

The Elizabeth Bowen Society reading group invites you to join us on Wednesday, 27 May, at 7 pm (UK time) for a discussion of The Shelbourne (1951), in which Bowen turns her attention to Dublin through the lens of one of its most storied spaces, the Shelbourne Hotel. Describing the building as “tall as a cliff, but more genial”, Bowen treats the hotel as a vantage point onto the city’s layered life. Set against moments of significant historical change, from the Irish Famine of the 1840s to the Easter Rising of 1916, the Shelbourne remains a “still point… from which the flux of time can be quietly observed” (Irish Independent). Blending social history, anecdote, and atmospheric reflection, Bowen’s work offers an expansive meditation on memory, continuity, and the coexistence of past and present.

All welcome!