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
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...
Occupation Bernice Rubens
When she first moved to London she worked as a so-called lady's maid (a job for which she was totally unqualified).
Rubens, Bernice. When I Grow Up. Time Warner Books, 2005.
74-5
Then she was taken on to teach English at Burgess Hill School ...
Occupation Ann Jellicoe
The Trust set out to produce historical community plays with west-country associations, including works written for it by Fay Weldon and David Edgar . With some difficulty, AJ succeeded in securing ongoing funding for it...
Performance of text Ann Jellicoe
AJ produced another community play for Lyme Regis: Western Women, based on a story by Fay Weldon .
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
233
Jellicoe, Ann. Community Plays. Methuen, 1987.
31
Publishing Mary Stott
Together with Pamela Anderson and Fay Weldon , Mary Stott published Simple Steps to Public Life, with illustrations by Tony Bethall .
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.
Reception Penelope Fitzgerald
Mollie Hardwick in Books and Bookmen pronounced this to be a delicate water-colour of a novel, small and charming.
qtd. in
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
PF 's winning of the coveted, ten-thousand-pound Booker Prize for it suggests that others saw more...
Textual Features Susan Hill
This is a remarkably informal quarterly: the sketch on its cover shows a bouncing mad-hatter figure with a bunch of flowers in his hand and a pile of books on his head. While endearingly open...
Textual Features Michelene Wandor
This includes work by Nora Bartlett , Sara Maitland , Judith Kazantzis , Wendy Mulford , Libby Houston , Cora Kaplan , Michèle Roberts , Angela Carter , Noel Greig , Rozsika Parker , Alison Hennegan
Textual Production Christina Stead
This was a novel about her former boyfriend Keith Duncan . It began in the early 1930s as The Young Man Will Go Far then became The Travelling Scholar before acquiring its final title.
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg, 1995.
137
Textual Production Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice has been many times adapted for the theatre and for the large and small screens. Both A. A. Milne and the Australian dramatist Helen Jerome produced stage versions during the 1930s, and...
Textual Production Mary Brunton
Though Mary McKerrow calls MBforgotten in the title of her carefully-researched biography, and though Fay Weldon 's foreword says of Brunton's writing only that it continues to be a source of pleasure ....
Textual Production Rosalind Coward
RC published Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium?
The title Sacred Cows had been used by Fay Weldon ten years earlier.
“Bowker’s Global Books in Print”. globalbooksinprint.com.
Textual Production Joanna Trollope
JT 's modernised retelling of Sense and Sensibility (published in October 2013), is one of a series of projected Jane Austen updates. In January 2014 Trollope discussed Austen in a podcast with Fay Weldon in...
Travel Iris Murdoch
After IM 's stimulating visit to Paris in 1947, that city became permanently necessary in her life.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002.
254-5
Later, Murdoch and her husband visited many parts of the world, either on holiday (Scotland,...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Weldon, Fay. Praxis. Hodder and Stoughton, 1978.
Weldon, Fay. Puffball. Hodder and Stoughton, 1980.
Weldon, Fay. Rebecca West. Penguin, 1985.
Weldon, Fay. Remember Me. Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
Weldon, Fay. Rhode Island Blues. Flamingo, 2000.
Weldon, Fay. Sacred Cows. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
Anderson, Pamela et al. Simple Steps to Public Life. Virago, 1980.
Weldon, Fay. Splitting. Flamingo, 1995.
Weldon, Fay. The Bulgari Connection. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.
Weldon, Fay. The Cloning of Joanna May. Collins, 1989.
Weldon, Fay. The Fat Woman’s Joke. MacGibbon and Kee, 1967.
Weldon, Fay. The Heart of the Country. Hutchinson, 1987.
Weldon, Fay. The Hearts and Lives of Men. Heinemann, 1987.
Weldon, Fay, and David Bailey. The Lady is a Tramp: Portraits of Catherine Bailey. Thames and Hudson, 1995.
Weldon, Fay. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. Hodder and Stoughton, 1983.
Weldon, Fay. The President’s Child. Hodder and Stoughton, 1982.
Weldon, Fay. The Shrapnel Academy. Hodder and Stoughton, 1986.
Weldon, Fay. Watching Me, Watching You. Hodder and Stoughton, 1981.
Weldon, Fay. Wicked Women. Flamingo, 1995.
Weldon, Fay. Words of Advice. Random House, 1977.
Weldon, Fay. Words of Advice [play]. Samuel French, 1974.
Weldon, Fay. Worst Fears. Flamingo, 1996.