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
Anthologization Marina Warner
MW contributed to Jeanette Winterson 's collection of original stories about opera, Midsummer Nights, 2009, with Forget My Fate, a tale about Henry Purcell 's Dido and Aeneas.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Fictionalization Sappho
In the twentieth century Sappho continued full of potential for poets and prose-writers. Naomi Mitchison fictionalises her supposed school; Eavan Boland takes her as guide on an underworld journey (as Dante took Virgil); Jeanette Winterson
Friends, Associates Ruth Rendell
There RR lent out estate cottages to avant-garde writers younger than herself, such as Martin Amis , Julian Barnes , and Jeanette Winterson , to provide them with a place to write.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press, 1996.
627
Friends, Associates Ali Smith
Kasia Boddy , an academic collaborator with Smith and Wood, features quite prominently in the introduction to Smith's short-story collection The First Person—fittingly, given her academic specialization in the short story. AS also numbers...
Friends, Associates Susan Hill
Later in life SH developed friendships with writers Jeanette Winterson and Joanna Trollope .
Hill, Susan. “Susan Hill”. Susan Hill.
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
As a child SW loved writing poems and stories, all entirely derivative from her reading of popular books like the Dr Who novelizations. In the sixth form at school she began to find the study...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Waters
SW puts in puts in something like a regular work day when writing, but keeps going to all hours when re-writing. Despite her success, she still finds the process largely torture. And yet [s]tarting...
Intertextuality and Influence Naomi Alderman
NA says this book was facilitated by the success of fictions about other, distinct communities: Zadie Smith 's White Teeth, Monica Ali 's Brick Lane, and especially influenced by Jeanette Winterson 's Oranges...
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...
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, Sept. 2001, 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...
Literary responses Virginia Woolf
Orlando continues to arouse strong positive and negative feeling. Jeanette Winterson 's celebration of it in July 2002 (on a BBC2 programme entitled Art That Shook the World) as one of the great turning...
Literary responses Louise Page
Several reviewers found the story cumbersome or convoluted,
Eisen, Kurt. “Louise Page”. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. A Research and Production Source Book, edited by William W. Demastes, Greenwood Press, 1996, pp. 291-00.
294
but Jeanette Winterson in the Times Literary Supplement wrote that Louise Page had done well in keeping her simple tale uncluttered.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
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, Sept. 2005, p. 53.
53
For Jeanette Winterson it was sexy, strong, rhythmic, passionate, fully alive.
qtd. in
Crown, Sarah. “A life in poetry: Ruth Padel”. The Guardian, 16 May 2009.
Sarah Crown found it vintage Padel: a rich...

Timeline

By 3 March 1470: Sir Thomas Malory, a political prisoner in...

Writing climate item

By 3 March 1470

Sir Thomas Malory , a political prisoner in London, most probably in the Tower, finished compiling and writing his collection of legendary Arthurian romances, Le Morte d'Arthur.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Good Friday 1612: A magistrate broke up a gathering of thirteen...

Building item

Good Friday 1612

A magistrate broke up a gathering of thirteen people at Pendle Hill in Lancashire, on suspicion of their being witches.
Sharpe, James. “Introduction: the Lancashire witches in historical context”. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, edited by Robert Poole, Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. 1-18.

17 August 1612: The trial of the Lancashire witches resulted...

National or international item

17 August 1612

The trial of the Lancashire witches resulted in the execution of seven women and one man.
Paxman, David. “Lancashire Spiritual Culture and the Question of Magic”. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, edited by Timothy Erwin and Ourida Mostefai, Vol.
30
, 2001, pp. 223-43.
228
Sedley, Stephen. “Wringing out the Fault”. London Review of Books, 7 Mar. 2002, pp. 27-31.
28
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.

1 January 1916: The British edition of Vogue (an American...

Building item

1 January 1916

The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast in Hanover Square, London.
Winship, Janice. Inside Women’s Magazines. Pandora, 1987.
166
White, Cynthia L. Women’s Magazines 1693-1968. Michael Joseph, 1970.
90
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Spawls, Alice. “Does one flare or cling?”. London Review of Books, Vol.
38
, No. 9, 5 May 2016, pp. 40-2.

16 April 2007: Novelist Yann Martel began a project of sending...

Writing climate item

16 April 2007

Novelist Yann Martel began a project of sending a book every two weeks to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper together with an admonitory letter; on a website he recorded the books sent and gave the...

26 September 2009: The Guardian newspaper carried a number of...

Building item

26 September 2009

The Guardian newspaper carried a number of poems and short prose pieces commissioned in support of the 10:10 initiative to reduce carbon emissions.
“10:10 Review climate change special”. The Guardian, 26 Sept. 2009.

6 June 2013: Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo, in her...

Writing climate item

6 June 2013

Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo , in her early thirties, published a first novel, We Need New Names, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.

2 October 2016: An Italian journalist, Claudio Gatti, in...

Writing climate item

2 October 2016

An Italian journalist, Claudio Gatti , in an article in the New York Review of Books, used financial and publishers' records to unmask the best-selling pseudonymous novelist known as Elena Ferrante as a professional...

Texts

Winterson, Jeanette. 12 Bytes.
Winterson, Jeanette. “A Short”. The Times, No. 67746, p. 6S.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Alice Oswald: A Sleepwalk on the Severn”. Jeanette Winterson, 2013, https://www.jeanettewinterson.com/poem/alice-oswald-a-sleepwalk-on-the-severn/.
Winterson, Jeanette. Art and Lies. Cape, 1994.
Winterson, Jeanette. Art Objects. Cape, 1995.
Winterson, Jeanette, and Paula Youens. Boating for Beginners. Methuen, 1985.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Cut Out and Keep”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 52-4.
Winterson, Jeanette. Fit for the Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well. Pandora, 1986.
Winterson, Jeanette. “From Ted Hughes to HG Wells: Jeanette Winterson picks the best books about the moon”. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/20/moon-best-books-about-earths-satellite.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Good reading we bring”. Guardian Weekly, edited by Ginny Hooker, p. 54.
Winterson, Jeanette. Great Moments in Aviation and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Two Filmscripts. Vintage, 1994.
Winterson, Jeanette. Gut Symmetries. Granta, 1997.
Winterson, Jeanette, and Amelia Opie. “Introduction”. Adeline Mowbray, Pandora Press, 1986, p. v - viii.
Winterson, Jeanette. “It must be her hormones”. The Guardian, pp. Review 2 - 3.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Jeanette Winterson: we need to be more imaginative about modern marriage”. theguardian.com.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Jeanette Winterson: why I fasted for 11 days”. theguardian.com.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Malice behind author’s unmasking”. Guardian Weekly, p. 26.
Winterson, Jeanette. “My hero: Shelagh Delaney”. Guardian.co.uk.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Not a mother to Marilyn”. Times, p. 39.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Pandora, 1985.
Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Adapted from her novel by Jeanette Winterson. Pandora, 1990.
Winterson, Jeanette, editor. Passion Fruit: Romantic Fiction with a Twist. Pandora, 1986.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Sight”. The New York Times Sunday Book Review.
Winterson, Jeanette. Sexing the Cherry. Bloomsbury, 1989.
Winterson, Jeanette. Tanglewreck. Bloomsbury, 2006.