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.
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
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...
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 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.
189
Fay Weldon , calling this novel...
Reception Penelope Fitzgerald
Mollie Hardwick in Books and Bookmen pronounced this to be a delicate water-colour of a novel, small and charming.
“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...
Literary responses Eva Figes
Fay Weldon praised this novel as half poetry, half prose.
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.
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
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, 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, p. 104.
104
Literary responses Zoë Fairbairns
Savkar Altinel in the Times Literary Supplement was highly critical of this novel,
Altinel, Savkar. “Man Trouble”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4237, p. 676.
676
but the following year Patricia Craig , in the same journal, was more appreciative, crediting ZF with a sure touch with...
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...
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...
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.
Intertextuality and Influence Rosalind Coward
Feminism no longer has to be reiterated but simply breathed,RC declares.
Coward, Rosalind. Sacred Cows. HarperCollins.
7
She argues that whereas in the 1970s feminism was a powerful movement for challenging cultural and judicial norms that persistently disadvantaged women...
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 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...

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. Worst Fears. Flamingo, 1996.