ALTHOUGHElizabeth Bowen has lived mainly in England, she has always been in close touch with her native Ireland, particularly with her family home-Bowen's Caurt, Kilderrery, County Cork-which she inherited in 1931. Bawen's Court has haunted her imagination throughout her career as a navelist, and it is the object of this essay to shaw that the complex af habits, tastes and codes of behaviour, of which it is a symbol, has, to same extent at least, shaped her wark. Miss Bowen is undoubtedly one of the most thoughtful and conscious of contemporary novelists. Apart from the novels themselves, the chief evidence of her intense interest in the function and craft of fiction is her essay, 'Nates on Writing a Novel', ~Collected Impressions, pp.249-263). In one of the most interesting and important sections of this essay Miss Bowen discusses Moral Angle. She remarks, inter alia: