Michèle Roberts

Standard Name: Roberts, Michèle
Birth Name: Michèle Brigitte Roberts
Married Name: Michèle Brigitte Binns
Married Name: Michèle Brigitte Latter
Used Form: Michele Roberts
MR began to write during the later twentieth century: diaries, journalism, and collaborative scenarios and improvisations, for street theatre in connection with the burgeoning women's movement of the 1970s. She has had a few plays performed since, but has published poetry, twelve novels, short stories, reviews, and a memoir. Her fiction often includes fantastic elements, and hauntings presented as fact, in its characteristically fractured narratives with perceptible sources in her own life experience. Recently responses to her work have tended to polarise: avowed feminists love her; others loathe her.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Alison Fell
AF joined with Stef Pixner , Michèle Roberts , Tina Reid , and Ann Oosthuizen in publishing with Sheba Feminist Publishers a poetry volume, Smile Smile Smile Smile.
Fell, Alison et al. Smile Smile Smile Smile. Sheba Feminist Publishers.
prelims
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
1982
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Friends, Associates Alison Fell
As well as Sue Todd and Buzz Goodbody , her friends at this stage (who were also her political associates) included Michèle Roberts and Marsha Rowe , with whom her friendships became lifelong.
Roberts, Michèle. Paper Houses. Virago.
70
“Inventory. Acc. 12394. Alison Fell”. National Library of Scotland.
She...
Textual Production Alison Fell
AF was a constant source of scenes, burlesques, and improvisations for performance by the Women's Liberation Street Theatre Group . She also wrote for a number of underground or radical papers: Ink, Islington Gutter...
Publishing Alison Fell
The volume (Sheba's fourth ever) was decorated with exuberant drawings by Fell, Pixner , and Roberts .
Textual Production Zoë Fairbairns
The first project of the feminist collective formed by ZF with Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michele Roberts , and Michelene Wandor was to write and publish Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman.
1-3
Publishing Zoë Fairbairns
Photographs of contributors (including Kathy Acker , Leslie Dick , Sara Maitland , Agnes Owens , and Michèle Roberts ) adorn the back cover. Amanda Faulkner provided the illustrations.
Friends, Associates Zoë Fairbairns
ZF formed a feminist collective with fellow writers and socialists Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts , and Michelene Wandor .
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman.
1-3
Textual Production Helen Dunmore
Though initially known as a poet, HD was always a prolific writer of prose. In her mid-twenties she worked on a couple of [autobiographical] novels . . . which fortunately stayed far back in the...
Literary responses Pat Barker
This series of three working-class novels left PB highly respected, but critically pigeon-holed or typecast. Feminist critic Michèle Roberts notes that writing about women's domestic lives is popularly supposed to denote lack of imagination. Pat...
Literary responses Pat Barker
Another World was praised by several of PB 's fellow-novelists. Ruth Rendell thought it the most moving thing Barker had ever done; P. D. James called it subtle and beautifully written; Michele Roberts found...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Roberts, Michèle. The Book of Mrs Noah. Methuen, 1987.
Roberts, Michèle. The Looking Glass. Little, Brown, 2000.
Roberts, Michèle. The Mirror of the Mother. Methuen, 1986.
Roberts, Michèle. The Mistressclass. Little, Brown, 2003.
Roberts, Michèle. The Visitation. Women’s Press, 1983.
Roberts, Michèle. The Walworth Beauty. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Roberts, Michèle. The Wild Girl. Methuen, 1984.
Kazantzis, Judith et al. Touch Papers. Allison and Busby, 1982.
Roberts, Michèle. “Women Behaving Badly”. Mslexia, No. 68, pp. 12-13.