The Death of the Heart was published by Gollancz in 1938. Portia Quayne, sixteen, is the illegitimate daughter of Thomas Quayne’s father by a woman he ran off with in late middle age. After her mother’s death, Portia is sent to live with Thomas and his wife Anna in their tasteful Windsor Terrace house in London.
Portia is guileless in a world governed by social performance. She watches everything — and writes it all in her diary. When Anna reads the diary (a violation Portia eventually discovers), she is horrified not because the diary reveals secrets but because it reveals truths: that Anna’s marriage is empty, that their friends are strategic rather than genuine, that the adults around Portia operate through elaborate systems of emotional dishonesty.
Portia falls in love with Eddie, a charming young man who attaches himself to Anna’s circle. Eddie is incapable of adult feeling — he uses Portia’s devotion without malice but without reciprocity. Portia’s “death of the heart” is not a single moment but the gradual recognition that love offered freely will be consumed by people who cannot return it.
Bowen’s prose in this novel achieves its highest refinement: every sentence carries double weight, every social observation is also a moral judgment. The novel’s reputation has grown steadily since the 1960s; it is now widely considered the finest English novel of manners between James and Murdoch.
Collecting The Death of the Heart
First edition (Gollancz, London, 1938): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $500–$1,500
- Very good in jacket: $200–$500
- US first (Knopf): $100–$300