Fay Weldon

Standard Name: Weldon, Fay
Birth Name: Franklin Birkinshaw
Nickname: Fay
Self-constructed Name: Fay Davies
Married Name: Franklin Bateman
Married Name: Franklin Weldon
Married Name: Franklin Fox
Internationally acclaimed as a novelist, playwright and essayist, FW is a prolific writer whose work ranges over many genres and media, and in 2017 amounted to thirty-four novels, seven short-story volumes, three books for children, and six non-fictional works.
Armitstead, Claire. “Fay Weldon: ’Feminism was a success, but then you lose a generation’”. theguardian.com, 31 Mar. 2017.
Her fiction is translated into over a dozen languages. She has written numerous television and radio dramas, stage plays, non-fictional articles and studies, autobiography and experimental or mock autobiography. She has never, she says, written poetry.
Colour photo of Fay Weldon standing in a library at an event during the Oxford Literary Festival, 3 April 2011. She wears a grey top and a colourful patterened scarf.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships William Empson
Hetta broadcast during the war to South Africa (which was much targeted by Nazi propaganda) under the name of Soekie Trottle, and while Peking was under siege by the Communists for six weeks in...
Friends, Associates Elaine Feinstein
While she was teaching at Essex, EF met a number of poets, including Ed Dorn , who fed her interest in American poetry. She was also involved during these years with a group including Tom Pickard
Intertextuality and Influence Meiling Jin
In the introduction to the book of poems that was her first publication, MJ noted that poetry was a form of expression that comes easier to me than most others. This state of affairs was...
Intertextuality and Influence Ann Oakley
This is the first of AO 's novels without a central female protagonist; and the result is a certain lack of focus. The story is set at a resort on the coast of Turkey...
Intertextuality and Influence Rosalind Coward
Feminism no longer has to be reiterated but simply breathed,RC declares.
Coward, Rosalind. Sacred Cows. HarperCollins, 1999.
7
She argues that whereas in the 1970s feminism was a powerful movement for challenging cultural and judicial norms that persistently disadvantaged women...
Literary responses Zoë Fairbairns
Spare Rib gave this novel an appreciative review as a subtly feminist version of the power-sex-and-money sagas.Fay Weldon (in a review, not a blurb) called it such fun . . . so perspicacious, so...
Literary responses Eva Figes
Fay Weldon praised this novel as half poetry, half prose.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Literary responses Penelope Lively
Fay Weldon calls this novel James ian . . . in its complexities and its carefulness.
qtd. in
Lively, Penelope. Heat Wave. HarperPerennial, 1997.
back cover
Literary responses Shena Mackay
SM 's fellow-novelists greeted this work with a chorus of praise. Anita Brookner called it something quite rare . . . a rite of passage which will leave few readers unaffected.
qtd. in
Mackay, Shena. The Orchard on Fire. Vintage, 1999.
prelims
Fay Weldon said...
Literary responses Rebecca West
Some critics have taken issue with the sudden shift in tone, characterisation, and focus in Book Two. Harold Orel, for instance, comments that the second part resembles a case history drawn from some psychiatrist's notebook...
Literary responses Rebecca West
RW received a great deal of fan mail in response to this novel, which recent critics count among her best.
Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.
277
Novelist Fay Weldon has described Richard Quin, the younger brother, as one of the...
Literary responses Ali Smith
Some reviewers have taken umbrage at the perceived anti-capitalism of AS ' novel, among them Michael Upchurch of The New York Times, who complained at Smith's sympathetic portrayal of Else. He rendered this as...
Literary responses Maggie Gee
MG says that reviews were almost uniformly ecstatic. The book was praised by Rose Tremain and listed as Book of the Week by the Mail on Sunday.
Gee, Maggie. My Animal Life. Telegram Books, 2010.
189
Fay Weldon , calling this novel...
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
Literary responses Zoë Fairbairns
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer, Frank Pike , judged the novel ambitious yet unpretentious.
Pike, Frank. “Catching Up: Fiction”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4003, 7 Dec. 1979, p. 104.
104
He quoted a remark by Fay Weldon on its jacket, calling ZFa female H. G. Wells ,
Pike, Frank. “Catching Up: Fiction”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4003, 7 Dec. 1979, p. 104.
104

Timeline

22 September 1955: BBC television acquired its first commercially...

Building item

22 September 1955

BBC television acquired its first commercially sponsored competitor when ITV (Independent Television) began broadcasting alternative programmes.
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.
410
Weldon, Fay. Auto da Fay. Flamingo, 2002.
273

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, 1987.
86
Winship, Janice. Inside Women’s Magazines. Pandora, 1987.
166
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
85-6
Dancyger, Irene. A World of Women: An Illustrated History of Women’s Magazines. Gill and Macmillan, 1978.
157
Braithwaite, Brian, and Joan Barrell. The Business of Women’s Magazines. Associated Business Press, 1979.
155
Callil, Carmen. “The stories of our lives”. Guardian Unlimited, 26 Apr. 2008.

August 2007: The British Council, promoter of British...

National or international item

August 2007

The British Council , promoter of British culture in other countries, cut by forty million US dollars the cost of its activity in Europe, in order to expand its activities in the Middle East and...

Texts

Weldon, Fay. Action Replay. Samuel French, 1980.
Weldon, Fay. Affliction. HarperCollins, 1993.
Weldon, Fay. Auto da Fay. Flamingo, 2002.
Weldon, Fay. Big Women. Flamingo, 1997.
Weldon, Fay. “Bottom Drawer: What Fay Weldon never got published”. Mslexia, No. 38, p. 22.
Weldon, Fay. Chalcot Crescent. Atlantic Books Corvus, 2009.
Weldon, Fay. Darcy’s Utopia. Collins, 1990.
Weldon, Fay. Death of a She Devil. Head of Zeus, 2017.
Weldon, Fay. Down Among the Women. Heinemann, 1971.
Weldon, Fay. Female Friends. Heinemann, 1975.
Weldon, Fay, and Mary McKerrow. “Foreword”. Mary Brunton, The Forgotten Scottish Novelist, Orcadian, 2001, p. xi - xii.
Weldon, Fay. Growing Rich. Flamingo, 1992.
Weldon, Fay. Habits of the House. Head of Zeus, 2012.
Weldon, Fay. I Love My Love. Samuel French, 1984.
Trollope, Joanna, and Fay Weldon. Joanna Trollope and Fay Weldon discuss Jane Austen. http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2014/jan/03/jane-austen-weldon-trollope-podcast.
Weldon, Fay. Kehua!. Atlantic Corvus, 2010.
Weldon, Fay. Leader of the Band. Hodder and Stoughton, 1988.
Weldon, Fay. Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen. Michael Joseph/Rainbird, 1984.
Weldon, Fay. Life Force. HarperCollins, 1992.
Weldon, Fay. Mantrapped. Fourth Estate, 2004.
Weldon, Fay. “Me and My Shadows”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 160-5.
Weldon, Fay. Mischief: Fay Weldon Selects Her Best Short Stories. Head of Zeus, 2015.
Weldon, Fay. Moon over Minneapolis. HarperCollins, 1991.
Weldon, Fay, and Elaine Feinstein, editors. New Stories 4. Hutchinson, 1979.
Weldon, Fay. Polaris. Penguin, 1989.