Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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...
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...
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.
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
.
Hill, Selima. My Sister’s Horse. Smith/Doorstop Books.
2
On its cover Michèle Roberts
is quoted writing in Time Out that SH
evokes the inner childhood world we're supposed to give up as we become...
Textual Features
Susan Hill
This is a remarkably informal quarterly: the sketch on its cover shows a bouncing mad-hatter figure with a bunch of flowers in his hand and a pile of books on his head. While endearingly open...
Family and Intimate relationships
Frances Horovitz
After her death Michèle Roberts
reported that the irrepressible Michael Horovitz
, while devoted to her memory, was still giving less space to female than to male poets in anthologies or at his Poetry Olympics...
Literary responses
Judith Kazantzis
Michèle Roberts
praised the handling of language here as totally satisfying.
The collaborative Touch Papers, September 1982, included poems by JK
, many of which had appeared already in such places as Spare Rib, Ambit, Tribune, Samphire, New Poetry, and—this...
Timeline
June 1972: Spare Rib, a feminist periodical issued monthly...
Women writers item
June 1972
Spare Rib, a feminist periodical issued monthly by Spare Ribs
from 27 Clerkenwell Close, London, was launched to put women's liberation on the news stands.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press.
86
25 November 1982: Diana Scott issued Bread and Roses: An Anthology...
Women writers item
25 November 1982
Diana Scott
issued Bread and Roses: An Anthology of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Poetry by Women Writers.
By mid-October 1983: Ursula Owen, editor of Virago Press, published...
Women writers item
By mid-October 1983
Ursula Owen
, editor of Virago Press
, published with them an anthology of essays: Fathers: Reflections by Daughters.
Texts
Roberts, Michèle. “’I took a decision not to have children’”. Mslexia, No. 23, p. 11.
Roberts, Michèle. A Piece of the Night. Women’s Press, 1978.
Roberts, Michèle. All the Selves I Was. Virago Press, 1995.
Roberts, Michèle. “Anger”. The Seven Deadly Sins, edited by Alison Fell and Alison Fell, Serpent’s Tail, 1988.
Wandor, Michelene, and Michèle Roberts, editors. Cutlasses & Earrings. Playbooks, 1977.
Roberts, Michèle. Daughters of the House. Virago Press, 1992.
Roberts, Michèle. During Mother’s Absence. Virago Press, 1993.