Jeanette Winterson

Standard Name: Winterson, Jeanette
Birth Name: Jeanette Winterson
JW , writing in the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, has been acclaimed by some critics and savaged by others for her provocative and outspoken novels, in which she uncompromisingly confronts cultural notions of gender identity, sexuality, and religion. She attempts to change the world through her writing in the manner of but in place of political activism. Her work is widely studied and celebrated by feminist and lesbian readers and critics. Characteristically, she blends many genres: fable, fairytale, fantasy, history, philosophy, lesbian writing, science fiction, magic realism, and scientific studies. She is fond of stories in which the characters are on a journey together.
Photograph of Janette Winterson taken in Warsaw, Poland, on 16 February 2005 by Mariusz Kubik. She has her lips parted, and is apparently speaking into a microphone . She has short, brown,curly hair and wear a black t-shirt with a seahorse logo.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Marina Warner
MW contributed to Jeanette Winterson 's collection of original stories about opera, Midsummer Nights, 2009, with Forget My Fate, a tale about Henry Purcell 's Dido and Aeneas.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop.
Fictionalization Sappho
In the twentieth century Sappho continued full of potential for poets and prose-writers. Naomi Mitchison fictionalises her supposed school; Eavan Boland takes her as guide on an underworld journey (as Dante took Virgil); Jeanette Winterson
Friends, Associates Ruth Rendell
There RR lent out estate cottages to avant-garde writers younger than herself, such as Martin Amis , Julian Barnes , and Jeanette Winterson , to provide them with a place to write.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press, 1996.
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Friends, Associates Ali Smith
Kasia Boddy , an academic collaborator with Smith and Wood, features quite prominently in the introduction to Smith's short-story collection The First Person—fittingly, given her academic specialization in the short story. AS also numbers...
Friends, Associates Susan Hill
Later in life SH developed friendships with writers Jeanette Winterson and Joanna Trollope .
Hill, Susan. “Susan Hill”. Susan Hill.
Intertextuality and Influence Naomi Alderman
NA says this book was facilitated by the success of fictions about other, distinct communities: Zadie Smith 's White Teeth, Monica Ali 's Brick Lane, and especially influenced by Jeanette Winterson 's Oranges...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
As a child SW loved writing poems and stories, all entirely derivative from her reading of popular books like the Dr Who novelizations. In the sixth form at school she began to find the study...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
SW puts in puts in something like a regular work day when writing, but keeps going to all hours when re-writing. Despite her success, she still finds the process largely torture. And yet [s]tarting...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Shelley
The year 2018, bicentenary of Frankenstein, was marked by publications and conferences honouring MS . A bio-pic, Mary Shelley, starring Elle Fanning , was released in July, having been seen at festivals since...
Intertextuality and Influence Sappho
Margaret Reynolds in The Sappho Companion, 2001, sweeps with a broad net translations, portraits, ballets, operas, poems, plays, novels, songs and treatises.
Gubar, Susan. “Multiple personality”. Women’s Review of Books, No. 12, pp. 13 -14.
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She too ends on the potential of Sappho as lesbian foremother...
Intertextuality and Influence Zoë Fairbairns
People she thanks for helping (for instance, in interviews) with the research for this book include Rosie Boycott , Sara Maitland , Jeanette Winterson , and her own parents. Part of the novel grew from...
Intertextuality and Influence Ali Smith
In Perfect, a guest and hotal reviewer, Penny, is assailed with misperceptions and lack of recognition. After helping a mysterious young woman (who turns out to be Sara's sister, Clare) to pry the cover...
Literary responses Sara Maitland
This book was warmly welcomed in The Guardian by Kathleen Jamie , who found it both unique and timely, written with great skill, judgment and good humour.
Jamie, Kathleen. “Noises off”. The Guardian.
Jeanette Winterson picked it as a favourite read...
Literary responses Grace Nichols
GN 's publishers quote glowing opinions about her work. Gwendolyn Brooks has praised her rich music, an easy lyricism . . . also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean,Jeanette Winterson
Literary responses Ruth Padel
Linda France , reviewing this book for Mslexia, called it intimate, animated, and inviting.
France, Linda. “One of a Kind”. Mslexia, No. 26, p. 53.
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For Jeanette Winterson it was sexy, strong, rhythmic, passionate, fully alive.
Crown, Sarah. “A life in poetry: Ruth Padel”. The Guardian.
Sarah Crown found it vintage Padel: a rich...

Timeline

By 3 March 1470
Sir Thomas Malory , a political prisoner in London, most probably in the Tower, finished compiling and writing his collection of legendaryArthurian romances, Le Morte d'Arthur.
Good Friday 1612
A magistrate broke up a gathering of thirteen people at Pendle Hill in Lancashire, on suspicion of their being witches.
Sharpe, James. “Introduction: the Lancashire witches in historical context”. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, edited by Robert Poole, Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. 1 - 18.
17 August 1612
The trial of the Lancashire witches resulted in the execution of seven women and one man.
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast in Hanover Square, London.
16 April 2007
Novelist Yann Martel began a project of sending a book every two weeks to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper together with an admonitory letter; on a website he recorded the books sent and gave the...
26 September 2009
The Guardian newspaper carried a number of poems and short prose pieces commissioned in support of the 10:10 initiative to reduce carbon emissions.
6 June 2013
Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo , in her early thirties, published a first novel, We Need New Names, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize.
2 October 2016
An Italian journalist, Claudio Gatti , in an article in the New York Review of Books, used financial and publishers' records to unmask the best-selling pseudonymous novelist known as Elena Ferrante as a professional...