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 Helen Dunmore
Reviewers welcomed the totally believable parallel world of these realistic fantasies, discerning in it a haunting, dangerous beauty all of its own.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
The Tide Knot was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize (awarded on the basis...
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 Ephelia
Mulvihill's website at http://marauder.millersville.edu/~resound/ephelia/ offers a great deal of information including identifications, put forward with greater or lesser degrees of certainty, of twenty-three historical personages named in Female Poems on Several Occasions, together with...
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...
Literary responses Maggie Gee
The cover of the paperback edition quotes Anita Brookner in The Spectator saying I read it twice, and it was even better the second time, and Jeanette Winterson in the Sunday Times saying it was...
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.
54
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 Djuna Barnes
DB wrote bitterly about Nightwood's literary reputation: There is not a person in the literary world who has not heard of, read and stolen some from Nightwood . . . [but] not more than...
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, Vol.
xviii
, No. 12, pp. 13-14.
13
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...

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.