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 Virginia Woolf
Orlando continues to arouse strong positive and negative feeling. Jeanette Winterson 's celebration of it in July 2002 (on a BBC2 programme entitled Art That Shook the World) as one of the great turning...
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...
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. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
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...
Reception Ali Smith
As recipient of the Saltire Literary Award and a 10,000-euro prize from the Scottish Arts Council , Free Love and Other Stories was received with considerable acclaim. According to Jeanette Winterson , AS was actually...
Textual Features Ali Smith
The subject of voice appears in a more darkly humorous aspect in The Child, wherein the woman narrator finds a baby mysteriously present in her shopping cart. The baby proceeds to spout all manner...
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...
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...
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.
39
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...
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...
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...
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...

Timeline

By 3 March 1470: Sir Thomas Malory, a political prisoner in...

Writing climate item

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...

Building item

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, pp. 1-18.

17 August 1612: The trial of the Lancashire witches resulted...

National or international item

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...

Building item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Building item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Texts

Winterson, Jeanette. “A Short”. The Times, No. 67746, p. 6S.
Winterson, Jeanette. Art and Lies. Cape, 1994.
Winterson, Jeanette. Art Objects. Cape, 1995.
Winterson, Jeanette, and Paula Youens. Boating for Beginners. Methuen, 1985.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Cut Out and Keep”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 52-4.
Winterson, Jeanette. Fit for the Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well. Pandora, 1986.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Good reading we bring”. Guardian Weekly, edited by Ginny Hooker, p. 54.
Winterson, Jeanette. Great Moments in Aviation and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Two Filmscripts. Vintage, 1994.
Winterson, Jeanette. Gut Symmetries. Granta, 1997.
Winterson, Jeanette, and Amelia Opie. “Introduction”. Adeline Mowbray, Pandora Press, 1986, p. v - viii.
Winterson, Jeanette. “It must be her hormones”. The Guardian, pp. Review 2 - 3.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Jeanette Winterson: we need to be more imaginative about modern marriage”. theguardian.com.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Jeanette Winterson: why I fasted for 11 days”. theguardian.com.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Malice behind author’s unmasking”. Guardian Weekly, p. 26.
Winterson, Jeanette. “My hero: Shelagh Delaney”. Guardian.co.uk.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Not a mother to Marilyn”. Times, p. 39.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Pandora, 1985.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Adapted from her novel by Jeanette Winterson. Pandora, 1990.
Winterson, Jeanette, editor. Passion Fruit: Romantic Fiction with a Twist. Pandora, 1986.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Sight”. The New York Times Sunday Book Review.
Winterson, Jeanette. Sexing the Cherry. Bloomsbury, 1989.
Winterson, Jeanette. Tanglewreck. Bloomsbury, 2006.
Winterson, Jeanette. The Daylight Gate. Cornerstone Hammer, 2012.
Winterson, Jeanette. The Gap in Time. The Winter’s Tale Retold. Vintage Hogarth, 2015.
Winterson, Jeanette. “The horse in the snow”. The Guardian, pp. Review 4 - 5.