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
Literary responses Jackie Kay
Jeanette Winterson , picking her best books of 2010, called this a lovely book, thoughtful and high-spirited, registering loss and love alike.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Cut Out and Keep”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 52-4.
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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.
53
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...
Literary responses Ruth Padel
Her election was marred by unpleasantness. Another of the three short-listed candidates, Caribbean poet Derek Walcott , withdrew from the competition after a letter-writing campaign brought to the attention of potential voters the fact that...
Literary responses Louise Page
Several reviewers found the story cumbersome or convoluted,
Eisen, Kurt. “Louise Page”. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. A Research and Production Source Book, edited by William W. Demastes, Greenwood Press, pp. 291-00.
294
but Jeanette Winterson in the Times Literary Supplement wrote that Louise Page had done well in keeping her simple tale uncluttered.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
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.
627
Literary responses Adrienne Rich
Rich was during her lifetime and still is widely acclaimed and honoured as a major poet, theorist, and critic of culture. Her poetry and prose have been examined in literary and social criticism, and in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michèle Roberts
This volume brings together pieces from various occasions and venues. In them MR discusses many of her favourite topics—the food, sex and god named in her title, the second and third often involving the relation...
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
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, Vol.
xviii
, No. 12, pp. 13-14.
13
She too ends on the potential of Sappho as lesbian foremother...
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...
Literary responses Edith Sitwell
This collection met with immediate critical acclaim. ES was hailed as a leading poet of her generation.
Greene, Richard. Proposal: Edith Sitwell: A Life.
12
Novelist Jeanette Winterson has recently called Still Falls the Raintremendous.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Not a mother to Marilyn”. Times, p. 39.
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Literary responses Edith Sitwell
Sitwell was subject to dismissive antifeminist comment from such critics as Geoffrey Grigson and Harold Acton .
Hill, Rosemary. “No False Modesty”. London Review of Books, Vol.
33
, No. 20, pp. 25-6.
26
The poets of the Movement were famously dismissive of ES . Al Alvarez published a notorious and...
Reception Ali Smith
Hotel World was shortlisted for the 2001 Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. According to her interview with Jeanette Winterson , AS did not bother preparing a victory speech for the Booker...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Winterson, Jeanette. The Passion. Bloomsbury, 1987.
Winterson, Jeanette. The PowerBook. Jonathan Cape, 2000.
Winterson, Jeanette. The Stone Gods. Penguin, 2007.
Winterson, Jeanette. The World and Other Places. Jonathan Cape, 1998.
Winterson, Jeanette. “When all the ladies loved Paris”. Times.
Winterson, Jeanette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Jonathan Cape, 2011.
Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. Cape, 1992.