Doris Lessing

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Standard Name: Lessing, Doris
Birth Name: Doris May Tayler
Married Name: Doris May Wisdom
Married Name: Doris May Lessing
Pseudonym: Jane Somers
The formidably productive and versatile DL , Nobel Prize winner, set her mark on late twentieth-century fiction and remained a force to be reckoned with in the twenty-first. Her major themes—life in colonial Africa, the problems confronting women (political, sexual, spiritual), human experience depicted through recourse to imaginary, extraterrestrial cultures—embrace most of the central concerns of her generation. As well as novels, short stories, science fiction, poetry, plays, essays, political analysis, travel books, and autobiography, she published light-hearted cultural satire and books about cats.
Head-shot of Doris Lessing, with her grey hair pulled back, and wearing a colourful patchwork jacket.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Hélène Barcynska
One of the earliest joint publications by Marguerite and Armiger Barclay was an anonymous sentimental novel which the Bodleian Library catalogue dates 1910, tentatively but improbably, since they did not marry till 1911. It is...
Publishing Simone de Beauvoir
SB 's novel The Mandarins, translated by Leonard M. Friedman , appeared in English in both hardback and paperback, the latter with an introduction by Doris Lessing .
Francis, Claude, and Fernande Gontier. Les écrits de Simone de Beauvoir. Gallimard.
171
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre has also been subject to a host of feminist revisions. Beatrice Kean Seymour 's The Hopeful Journey (1923) presents a response to, and The Second Mrs. Conford (1951) a reworking of, the novel's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anita Brookner
AB relishes all this. But she writes with tactful sympathy of Germaine de Staël and her younger, mostly unreciprocating lovers, and of Judith Gautier (daughter of Théophile ), who deserves to be remembered not only...
Publishing Colette
This was translated into English by Charles King as The Mother of Claudine, 1937, before it became My Mother's House, and in 2006 Claudine's House, with an introduction by Doris Lessing .
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Norell, Donna M. Colette: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography. Garland.
63
Textual Features Lettice Cooper
This novel touches on the squatters theme which LC had used in Desirable Residence. Here the police receive an anonymous tip-off that unusual behaviour is going on at two large, dilapidated and divided Victorian...
Education Sarah Daniels
SD was still at school, aged sixteen, when a friend persuaded her that they should use free tickets given the school by the local repertory theatre. At first the theatre was boring (its main attraction...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Daniels
SD began writing after reading an injunction from Doris Lessing about putting one's life in order. Some fringe plays that she attended were absolutely dreadful, which made her confident that she could do better...
Education Margaret Drabble
MD has recalled how her father, newly demobbed after his wartime army service, patiently taught me to read from a primer called The Radiant Way. Later, Mary McCarthy 's The Group and Doris Lessing
politics Margaret Drabble
She also remembered the rise of feminism: the books by Doris Lessing , Sylvia Plath , Nell Dunn , and Edna O'Brienthat would irreversibly affect women's destiny, and the pioneering of feminist journalism by Mary Stott .
Drabble, Margaret. “1960s”. The Guardian, pp. Weekend 25 - 31.
28
Travel Margaret Drabble
Her travels (like those of Doris Lessing ) have included visiting China with a writers' group in 1993.
Athill, Diana et al. “Who am I? Who do I want to be?”. The Guardian, Vol.
review 2-4
.
Review 3
Literary responses Maureen Duffy
Doris Lessing wrote that MD created the world of her early years so that one can feel, smell, and taste it.
Duffy, Maureen. That’s How It Was. Virago.
cover
Textual Production Millicent Garrett Fawcett
To find out if her work would stand on its own merits, MGF , like Doris Lessing after her, tested the waters by publishing her next novel pseudonymously.
Oakley, Ann et al. “Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Duty and Determination”. Feminist Theorists, edited by Dale Spender, Reprint, Pantheon Books, pp. 184-02.
189
Strachey, Ray. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. J. Murray.
55-6
Occupation Eva Figes
EF had a long stint as co-editor of this series, which includes works on Margaret Atwood , Jane Austen , Elizabeth Bowen , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Frances Burney , Willa Cather , Colette ,...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Germaine Greer
The introduction begins, It is not quite forty years since eliminating menopause was first mooted.
Greer, Germaine. The Change. Penguin.
1
It moves swiftly into the concept of a fear or hatred of old women, which Greer names anophobia.
Greer, Germaine. The Change. Penguin.
2

Timeline

1826: The Royal Society of Literature received...

Writing climate item

1826

The Royal Society of Literature received its charter; it had been founded several years previously.

17 February 1958: CND, or the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,...

Building item

17 February 1958

CND, or the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , was founded at a public meeting in London; it held its first march that spring, at the Easter weekend.

By late 1963: The best-known novel by US author Mary McCarthy,...

Writing climate item

By late 1963

The best-known novel by US author Mary McCarthy , The Group, appeared in Britain. It traces the later lives of a number of graduates of Vassar , then an all-women's college.

1977: Elaine Showalter published A Literature of...

Writing climate item

1977

Elaine Showalter published A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing, an important work in women's literary history.

By mid-October 1983: Ursula Owen, editor of Virago Press, published...

Women writers item

By mid-October 1983

Ursula Owen , editor of Virago Press , published with them an anthology of essays: Fathers: Reflections by Daughters.

9 December 2006-17 July 2007: The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted...

Writing climate item

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Lessing, Doris. A Man and Two Women. Granada, 1965.
Lessing, Doris. A Proper Marriage. Michael Joseph, 1954.
Lessing, Doris. A Ripple from the Storm. Michael Joseph, 1958.
Lessing, Doris. African Laughter. HarperCollins, 1992.
Lessing, Doris. Ben, in the World. Flamingo, 2000.
Lessing, Doris. Briefing for a Descent into Hell. Jonathan Cape, 1971.
Lessing, Doris. Collected African Stories. Michael Joseph, 1973.
Lessing, Doris. Collected African Stories. Flamingo, 1994.
Lessing, Doris. Collected Stories. Michael Joseph, 1978.
Lessing, Doris. Collected Stories Volume Two. Flamingo, 1994.
Lessing, Doris. Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire. Jonathan Cape, 1983.
Lessing, Doris. “Each His Own Wilderness”. New English Dramatists, edited by Elliott M. Browne, Penguin, 1959, pp. 11-95.
Lessing, Doris. Five: Short Novels. Michael Joseph, 1953.
Lessing, Doris. If the Old Could . . . Michael Joseph, 1984.
Lessing, Doris. Landlocked. MacGibbon and Kee, 1965.
Lessing, Doris. London Observed. HarperCollins, 1992.
Lessing, Doris. Love, Again. Flamingo, 1996.
Lessing, Doris. Martha Quest. Michael Joseph, 1952.
Lessing, Doris. Martha Quest. Flamingo, 1993.
Lessing, Doris. “On Not Winning the Nobel Prize”. PMLA, Vol.
123
, No. 3, pp. 780-7.
Lessing, Doris. Particularly Cats. Michael Joseph, 1967.
Lessing, Doris. Play with a Tiger. Michael Joseph, 1962.
Lessing, Doris, and Charlie Adlard. Playing the Game. Harper Collins, 1995.
Lessing, Doris. Shikasta. Jonathan Cape, 1979.
Lessing, Doris. Shikasta. Flamingo, 1994.