Doris Lessing

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Standard Name: Lessing, Doris
Birth Name: Doris May Tayler
Married Name: Doris May Wisdom
Married Name: Doris May Lessing
Pseudonym: Jane Somers
The formidably productive and versatile DL , Nobel Prize winner, set her mark on late twentieth-century fiction and remained a force to be reckoned with in the twenty-first. Her major themes—life in colonial Africa, the problems confronting women (political, sexual, spiritual), human experience depicted through recourse to imaginary, extraterrestrial cultures—embrace most of the central concerns of her generation. As well as novels, short stories, science fiction, poetry, plays, essays, political analysis, travel books, and autobiography, she published light-hearted cultural satire and books about cats.
Head-shot of Doris Lessing, with her grey hair pulled back, and wearing a colourful patchwork jacket.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Naomi Mitchison
Brian Morton , reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement, was intrigued but not wholly convinced. For Mitchison as for Doris Lessing , he remarked, the relation of myth to science demands a futurological setting...
politics Olivia Manning
As to gender politics, though she admired the suffragists and felt strongly about women's rights, she thought of herself not as a woman writer but as a writer who happened to be a woman, and...
Publishing Anna Kavan
An event celebrating its publication, on 3 July at the London Review Bookshop , involved four authors including Doris Lessing and Virginia Ironside .
“Advertisement for London Review Bookshop”. London Review of Books, p. 27.
Textual Production Susan Hill
The anthology of British women writers she published in 1990 with Michael Joseph as The Parchment Moon: An Anthology of Modern Women's Short Stories was reprinted the following year as The Penguin Book of Modern...
Textual Production Bessie Head
In 1984 BH was commissioned by Heinemann to write her autobiography. She felt she had plenty of records to work from, not for her South African youth but for her Botswanan maturity, and expected that...
Literary responses Irene Handl
Almost all responses to this novel quoted on the cover of its 1985 reprint use somewhere the word original. The Sioux was welcomed at its first appearance by Noel Coward and by Daphne du Maurier
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Germaine Greer
The introduction begins, It is not quite forty years since eliminating menopause was first mooted.
Greer, Germaine. The Change. Penguin.
1
It moves swiftly into the concept of a fear or hatred of old women, which Greer names anophobia.
Greer, Germaine. The Change. Penguin.
2
Occupation Eva Figes
EF had a long stint as co-editor of this series, which includes works on Margaret Atwood , Jane Austen , Elizabeth Bowen , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Frances Burney , Willa Cather , Colette ,...
Textual Production Millicent Garrett Fawcett
To find out if her work would stand on its own merits, MGF , like Doris Lessing after her, tested the waters by publishing her next novel pseudonymously.
Oakley, Ann et al. “Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Duty and Determination”. Feminist Theorists, edited by Dale Spender, Reprint, Pantheon Books, pp. 184-02.
189
Strachey, Ray. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. J. Murray.
55-6
Literary responses Maureen Duffy
Doris Lessing wrote that MD created the world of her early years so that one can feel, smell, and taste it.
Duffy, Maureen. That’s How It Was. Virago.
cover
Education Margaret Drabble
MD has recalled how her father, newly demobbed after his wartime army service, patiently taught me to read from a primer called The Radiant Way. Later, Mary McCarthy 's The Group and Doris Lessing
politics Margaret Drabble
She also remembered the rise of feminism: the books by Doris Lessing , Sylvia Plath , Nell Dunn , and Edna O'Brienthat would irreversibly affect women's destiny, and the pioneering of feminist journalism by Mary Stott .
Drabble, Margaret. “1960s”. The Guardian, pp. Weekend 25 - 31.
28
Travel Margaret Drabble
Her travels (like those of Doris Lessing ) have included visiting China with a writers' group in 1993.
Athill, Diana et al. “Who am I? Who do I want to be?”. The Guardian, Vol.
review 2-4
.
Review 3
Education Sarah Daniels
SD was still at school, aged sixteen, when a friend persuaded her that they should use free tickets given the school by the local repertory theatre. At first the theatre was boring (its main attraction...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Daniels
SD began writing after reading an injunction from Doris Lessing about putting one's life in order. Some fringe plays that she attended were absolutely dreadful, which made her confident that she could do better...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Lessing, Doris. “Sketches from Bohemia”. The Guardian, pp. G2, 4 - 5.
Lessing, Doris. The Cleft. Fourth Estate, 2007.
Lessing, Doris. The Diary of a Good Neighbour. Michael Joseph, 1983.
Lessing, Doris. The Doris Lessing Reader. Knopf, 1988.
Lessing, Doris. The Fifth Child. Jonathan Cape, 1988.
Lessing, Doris. The Four-Gated City. MacGibbon and Kee, 1969.
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. Michael Joseph, 1962.
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. Penguin, 1966.
Lessing, Doris. The Good Terrorist. Jonathan Cape, 1985.
Lessing, Doris. The Grass is Singing. Michael Joseph, 1950.
Lessing, Doris. The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. Jonathan Cape, 1982.
Lessing, Doris. The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five. Jonathan Cape, 1980.
Lessing, Doris. The Memoirs of a Survivor. Octagon, 1974.
Lessing, Doris. The Sirian Experiments. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
Lessing, Doris. The Story of a Non-Marrying Man. Jonathan Cape, 1972.
Lessing, Doris. The Summer Before the Dark. Jonathan Cape, 1973.
Lessing, Doris. The Sweetest Dream. Flamingo, 2001.
Lessing, Doris. This Was the Old Chief’s Country. Michael Joseph, 1951.
Lessing, Doris. Under My Skin. HarperCollins, 1994.
Lessing, Doris. Walking in the Shade. HarperCollins, 1997.