Margaret Forster

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Standard Name: Forster, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Forster
Margaret Forster 's tally of books, which began to appear in the later twentieth century, neared forty. They run the gamut from novels at one end to history and biography at the other, emphasising the complex relation of fiction to fact. Primarily a novelist, she also published remarkable works of family memoir, several biographies (some of them incorporating literary criticism), and recollections of Thackeray written as if by himself. She also edited and commented on literary works, and published a volume of poetry.
Black-and-white portrait photo of Margaret Forster, looking at the camera and leaning on what could be the back of a couch, 30 January 1964.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Daphne Du Maurier
DDM wrote a play about her relationship with Ellen, September Tide, which disguised the lesbian nature of that relationship. In it Gertrude Lawrence (a performer celebrated for acting in Noël Coward 's plays) took...
Fictionalization Elizabeth Barrett Browning
American poet Emily Dickinson loved EBB 's poetry. The language of Aurora Leigh crops up throughout her oeuvre, and she recalls the transformative experience, sanctifying the soul, of her early reading in one poem: I...
Intertextuality and Influence Carol Shields
According to Margaret Atwood , Unless was shortlisted for just about every major English-language prize, but Shields had reached such eminence that she now inhabited the stratosphere, far beyond the ken of juries.
Atwood, Margaret. “To the light house”. The Guardian, 26 Aug. 2003, p. 28.
28
English...
Literary responses Daphne Du Maurier
DDM found a champion in her fellow novelist Margaret Forster , who published a biography in 15 March 1993 and later wrote the entry on her in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Forster...
Literary responses Caroline Norton
Margaret Forster has written of CN in Significant Sisters, 1984, as have other historians of Victorian feminism. S. Bailey Sharbutt compares her favourably to other popular women novelists of her day and argues for...
Literary responses Daphne Du Maurier
While DDM felt she had written a delightfully funny satire, the critics were lukewarm at best. (Some at the publishing firm had recognized the book's weaknesses, but no one wanted to say anything for fear...
Reception Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The standard biography by Gardner B. Taplin is still the most detailed overall, but it dates from 1957. Other biographies of her singly or jointly with her husband have emerged, both popular works and more...
Residence Daphne Du Maurier
Margaret Forster , working on her life of Du Maurier, felt she had never understood the power of her subject's passion for Menabilly, or its influence on her work, until she herself visited the house.
Forster, Margaret. My Life in Houses. Chatto and Windus, 2014.
219-20
Textual Production Patricia Beer
For the London Review of Books, PB dealt with books by women both in her first review (on 8 November 1979, one month before the magazine first carried one of her poems), where she...
Wealth and Poverty Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Perhaps following Pen's birth, Robert Browning was persuaded to accept an allowance of £100 a year from EBB 's wealthy cousin John Kenyon . Kenyon wished to help the couple financially, and perhaps to equalize...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Forster, Margaret. “Bottom drawer”. Mslexia, No. 25, p. 46.
Forster, Margaret. Dames’ Delight. J. Cape, 1964.
Forster, Margaret. Daphne du Maurier. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
Forster, Margaret. Diary of an Ordinary Woman. Chatto and Windus, 2003.
Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography. Grafton, 1990.
Forster, Margaret. Fenella Phizackerley. Secker and Warburg, 1970.
Forster, Margaret. Georgy Girl. Secker and Warburg, 1965.
Forster, Margaret. Good Wives?. Chatto and Windus, 2001.
Forster, Margaret. Have the Men Had Enough?. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
Forster, Margaret. Hidden Lives. Viking, 1995.
Forster, Margaret. How to Measure a Cow. Chatto and Windus, 2016.
Forster, Margaret. Is There Anything You Want?. Chatto and Windus, 2005.
Forster, Margaret. Keeping the World Away?. Chatto and Windus, 2006.
Forster, Margaret. Lady’s Maid. Chatto and Windus, 1990.
Forster, Margaret. Marital Rites. Secker and Warburg, 1981.
Forster, Margaret. Miss Owen-Owen is At Home. Secker and Warburg, 1969.
Forster, Margaret. Mother Can You Hear Me?. Secker and Warburg, 1979.
Forster, Margaret. Mothers’ Boys. Chatto and Windus, 1994.
Forster, Margaret. Mr. Bone’s Retreat. Secker and Warburg, 1971.
Forster, Margaret. My Life in Houses. Chatto and Windus, 2014.
Forster, Margaret. Over. Chatto and Windus, 2007.
Forster, Margaret. Precious Lives. Chatto and Windus, 1998.
Forster, Margaret. Private Papers. Chatto and Windus, 1986.
Forster, Margaret. “Rebecca’s Ghost”. Lives for Sale: Biographers’ Tales, edited by Mark Bostridge, Continuum, 2004, pp. 52-6.
Forster, Margaret. Rich Desserts and Captain’s Thin. Chatto and Windus, 1997.