In August 1980 BH
submitted to Giles Gordon
, who was once again her agent, six stories all linked to her historical research, though separate in their creation and in their subsequent fate. One of...
Textual Production
Bessie Head
Giles Gordon
had suggested she write a village book of the genre of Jan Myrdal's Report from a Chinese Village or Ronald Blythe
's Akenside. She would need, he said, to impose a...
Textual Features
Helen Dunmore
About half of these nineteen very short stories (averaging less than ten pages apiece) are reprinted from magazines—Stand, the Irish Tatler, Writing Women, London Magazine—or anthologies. Short Days, Long Nights...
Textual Features
Ann Quin
Set in an unnamed town, which is clearly Brighton, the novel is, as Giles Gordon
describes it, a Graham Greene
thriller as if reworked by a somewhat romantic Burroughs
.
Gordon, Giles, and Ann Quin. “Introduction”. Berg, 1st Dalkey Archive edition, Dalkey Archive, p. vii - xiv.
ix
The first sentence—the...
Textual Features
Bessie Head
Cadmore is a teacher with brilliant credentials, and a visual artist whose drawings give dignity and value to ordinary life in the remote village of Dilepe and its oppressed and victimized people. She is also...
Textual Features
Penelope Mortimer
This takes the story of her life until her twenty-first birthday, treating herself (says critic Giles Gordon
) rather severely.
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, p. 26.
26
Publishing
Bessie Head
From the beginning BH
sounded defensive about this work, fearing it might be hard to place.
Eilersen, Gillian Stead. Bessie Head. Wits University Press.
168, 176
Sure enough, both Giles Gordon
and Hilary Rubinstein
, her agent at the time, felt it was...
Publishing
Bessie Head
Success as a novelist did not put a stop to BH
's shorter and more topical writings. Soon after finishing Maru she was writing for the New African about singer Miriam Makeba
's music and...
Publishing
Bessie Head
The book finished, the process of publication unexpectedly spun out into a nightmare. Trouble began when BH
requested 94 free copies for her to give, as she had promised, to the people she interviewed. Reg Davis-Poynter
Publishing
Bessie Head
Meanwhile Giles Gordon
well-meaningly but rashly raised with BH
the question of her tax situation in Botswana. The publishers came up with a complicated arrangement to keep costs down, whereby Bateleur Press
would be the...
Publishing
Penelope Mortimer
Giles Gordon
, who was at one time her literary agent, later wrote that she was impossible about her work. Pay her a compliment—and she would inevitably take it as an insult.
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, p. 26.
26
politics
Fay Weldon
Weldon wrote a fighting speech for the awards ceremony, protesting .about publishers' treatment of authors. She claimed later to have shown it ahead of time to the organisers, but I suppose they hadn't bothered to...
Literary responses
Louise Page
LP
was so moved that she wept as she wrote this play. She later perceived an autobiographical element in it.
Page, Louise. Plays: 1. Methuen.
xii
Reviewers were on the whole less impressed than they had previously been by Page...
Literary responses
Ann Quin
Berg earned AQ
two major awards: the Harkness Fellowship, given to the most promising Commonwealth artist under thirty years, and the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship from the University of New Mexico
.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
231
Giles Gordon
Literary responses
Penelope Mortimer
The adjectives chosen for these twelve stories by Giles Gordon
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography are luminous, incisive.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
At the time of publication they were praised in the Times and the Times...
Timeline
1965: Giles Gordon did a series of interviews for...
Women writers item
1965
Giles Gordon
did a series of interviews for The Scotsman with female authors: a species of writer that at the time wasn't particularly recognised, although it certainly had been in the previous century.
Texts
Duffy, Maureen. “A Nightingale in Bloomsbury Square”. Factions, edited by Giles Gordon and Alex Hamilton, Michael Joseph, 1974, pp. 169-04.
Gordon, Giles, editor. Beyond the Words. Hutchinson, 1975.
Gordon, Giles, and Ann Quin. “Introduction”. Berg, 1st Dalkey Archive edition, Dalkey Archive, 2001, p. vii - xiv.
Gordon, Giles, editor. Modern Short Stories 2, 1940-1980. J. M. Dent, 1982.
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, p. 26.
Gordon, Giles. “Reading Ann Quin’s Berg”. Context: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture.