Maggie Gee

Standard Name: Gee, Maggie
Birth Name: Margaret Mary Gee
Self-constructed Name: Maggie Gee
MG 's novels are deeply marked by the various threats that dominated the late twentieth century: nuclear damage, global warming, urban disintegration. They often centre on the particular difficulties and dilemmas of women's lives and the way the personal is imbricated with the political. Sometimes Gee explores the same theme in more than one novel; she has once gathered together characters from several earlier novels. She has not abandoned the interest in formal experiment with which she began, even though content may now be the dominant interest in her work. She also writes reviews, stories, plays for radio and television, and other minor genres, and has published an unusually-conceived memoir.
Head-to-toe colour photo portrait of Maggie Gee at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, 9 October 2010. She is wearing a black and red outfit, complete with red-laced shoes, a red coat, and red rings on her fingers. The photo is taken outside.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Fictionalization Virginia Woolf
Versions of VW appeared in many writings by other authors both during and after her own lifetime. On 8 March 1928, Vita Sackville-West informed her that Phyllis Bottome (a popular author and great Woolf fan)...
Friends, Associates E. J. Scovell
Her friends included a fellow Oxford poet, Anne Ridler (who later wrote her entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), and a younger novelist, Maggie Gee (whose brother married EJS 's niece), and...
Literary responses Pat Barker
PB 's The Ghost Road won the Booker Prize and many respectful reviews. The Wall Street Journal, however, and some other critics, accused it of anachronism, of bringing a post-Vietnam vision to its picture...
Literary responses Maureen Duffy
Duffy's website features praise for this novel from Rose Tremain and Maggie Gee .
Maureen Duffy: Author, poet, playwright.
Literary responses Jane Gardam
The TLS reviewer, Ruth Scurr , used as yardstick for this novel Kipling 's writings about his parallel childhood trauma and experience of evil (related in the story Baa Baa Black Sheep).
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012].
(12 November 2004): 21
Literary responses Jackie Kay
This collection won a prize from the Scottish Arts Council .
Kay, Jackie. Red Dust Road. Pan Macmillan, 2010.
129
Maggie Gee praised the stories in The Sunday Times Culture, calling them accomplished and fearless.
“The Knitting Circle”. London South Bank University: Lesbian and Gay Staff Association.
Literary responses Shena Mackay
SM 's fellow-novelists greeted this work with a chorus of praise. Anita Brookner called it something quite rare . . . a rite of passage which will leave few readers unaffected.
Mackay, Shena. The Orchard on Fire. Vintage, 1999.
prelims
Fay Weldon said...
Publishing Maria Edgeworth
John Gibson Lockhart managed ME 's dealings about this book with the publisher, Bentley : Bentley was to buy the first edition only, not the continuing copyright, and was to increase the payment if he...
Reception Bernardine Evaristo
Novelist Maggie Gee , reviewing this riproaring, full-bodied riff on sex, secrecy and family, picks out for special admiration the lyrical language used for Carmel's memories, and the way the reader first encounters Carmel's pious...
Textual Production Bernardine Evaristo
BE and Maggie Gee jointly edited NW15: The Anthology of New Writing Volume 15 (in a series whose titles have seen several changes), published through Granta and the British Council .
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop.

Timeline

16 August 1972
Five years after May Hobbs began a strike of night cleaners at the Ministry of Defence (supported by the civil servant trade union and others, and by feminist sympathisers), management agreed to the women's demands...
Spring 1983
Granta magazine's first listing of twenty Best of Young British Novelists included the names of six women: Pat Barker , Ursula Bentley , Buchi Emecheta , Maggie Gee , Lisa St Auban de Teran , and Rose Tremain .
1984
The publishing company Saqi Books was founded in London by André Gaspard and Mai Ghoussoub (sculptor and writer) to bridge the divide between Middle Eastern and Western cultures. It publishes a highly international list.