Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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, 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
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
Adrienne Rich
Rich was during her lifetime and still is widely acclaimed and honoured as a major poet, theorist, and critic of culture. Her poetry and prose have been examined in literary and social criticism, and in...
Literary responses
Shelagh Delaney
SD
is to an unusual extent identified with her successful first play and with nothing else. In 2010 Jeanette Winterson
wrote an exasperated piece on her entitled My hero: Shelagh Delaney. A Taste of...
Literary responses
Carol Ann Duffy
Jeanette Winterson
greeted this volume as [b]eautiful and moving poetry for the real world.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Good reading we bring”. Guardian Weekly, edited by Ginny Hooker, p. 54.
54
It won Costa Poetry Award.
Crawforth, Hannah, and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, editors. On Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Poets’ Celebration. Bloomsbury.
79
Literary responses
Helen Dunmore
Reviewers welcomed the totally believable parallel world of these realistic fantasies, discerning in it a haunting, dangerous beauty all of its own.
The Tide Knot was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize (awarded on the basis...
Literary responses
Edith Sitwell
This collection met with immediate critical acclaim. ES
was hailed as a leading poet of her generation.
Greene, Richard. Proposal: Edith Sitwell: A Life.
12
Novelist Jeanette Winterson
has recently called Still Falls the Raintremendous.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Not a mother to Marilyn”. Times, p. 39.
39
Literary responses
Ephelia
Mulvihill's website at http://marauder.millersville.edu/~resound/ephelia/ offers a great deal of information including identifications, put forward with greater or lesser degrees of certainty, of twenty-three historical personages named in Female Poems on Several Occasions, together with...
Hill, Rosemary. “No False Modesty”. London Review of Books, Vol.
33
, No. 20, pp. 25-6.
26
The poets of the Movement were famously dismissive of ES
. Al Alvarez
published a notorious and...
Literary responses
Maggie Gee
The cover of the paperback edition quotes Anita Brookner
in The Spectator saying I read it twice, and it was even better the second time, and Jeanette Winterson
in the Sunday Times saying it was...
Literary responses
Jackie Kay
Jeanette Winterson
, picking her best books of 2010, called this a lovely book, thoughtful and high-spirited, registering loss and love alike.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Cut Out and Keep”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 52-4.
54
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
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
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...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Winterson, Jeanette. The Passion. Bloomsbury, 1987.
Winterson, Jeanette. The PowerBook. Jonathan Cape, 2000.
Winterson, Jeanette. The Stone Gods. Penguin, 2007.
Winterson, Jeanette. The World and Other Places. Jonathan Cape, 1998.
Winterson, Jeanette. “When all the ladies loved Paris”. Times.
Winterson, Jeanette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Jonathan Cape, 2011.
Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. Cape, 1992.