The Last September, The Death of the Heart

In one hardcover volume—the two most popular novels by one of the greatest twentieth-century novelists, whose psychologically rich stories of lost innocence combine sharp humor with a devastating gift for exposing hidden motivations

The Last September is a portrait of a young woman’s coming-of-age in a brutalized time and place, where the ordinariness of life is shadowed by the impending doom of history. In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, young Lois’s guardian, Sir Richard Naylor, and his family and friends stubbornly carry on with their tennis parties and dances, all while knowing that British rule in Ireland—and with it, their privileged way of life—is about to end.

The Death of the Heart, perhaps Bowen’s masterpiece, is a devastating story of adolescent love and the betrayal of innocence. When orphaned sixteen-year-old Portia Quayne arrives in London and falls for Eddie, an attractive and carefree cad, their entanglement threatens to shatter the carefully built illusions of everyone in their politely treacherous social world.

Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author’s life and times.