The family was poor and moved constantly to avoid clearing debts. The best of the Bowen short stories – or ‘twilight tales,’ as she liked to call them – were collected in several volumes between 19, her own favourites appearing in The Bishop of Hell (1949). Despite this productivity, the best of her books brilliantly conjure up haunted landscapes along with a unique mixture of cruelty and pathos among her characters. She used a variety of pen names to conceal her huge output of over 150 novels, using the Bowen pseudonym on her supernatural stories, starting with Black Magic (1909), a tale of a medieval witch that became a best seller. She spent the early years of her career writing prolifically to support her extravagant mother and sister. Her mother had literary aspirations her father was an alcoholic who died on the London streets. A writer whose life was as fascinating as her output, Marjorie Bowen was born Margaret Gabrielle Vere Campbell Long in 1885 on Hayling Island, Hampshire.
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