Shena Mackay

Standard Name: Mackay, Shena
Birth Name: Shena Mackey
Self-constructed Name: Shena Mackay
SM had published by the close of the twentieth century ten novels and several short-story collections. She has also edited anthologies and written poetry, and she reviews for newspapers. She is highly popular as well as highly prolific. Following her instant media success in the 1960s, SM dropped out of notice, but she made a strong comeback from the late 1980s. Most of her works have been available in paperback from the 1990s.
Portrait of Shena Mackay. She has cropped white hair with bangs, and wears an orange cardigan. Her arms are crossed in front of her, and she holds her glasses in her left hand. The background is a dark teal.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Liz Lochhead
As well as reading her poetry at festivals and other venues, LL has selected and edited for Mslexia magazine in early 2004 a number of stories and poems on the theme of ice.
Lochhead, Liz. “Ice”. Mslexia, Vol.
20
, Jan. 2004, pp. 26-7.
26ff
Her...
Friends, Associates Brigid Brophy
BB 's close friends included writers Elizabeth Jane Howard , Shena Mackay , and Iris Murdoch , whom she met at Cheltenham in summer 1955. Murdoch's letters to Brophy reveal the depth and many-sidedness of...
Literary responses Angela Carter
Jenny Turner wrote that in this first novel AC felt compelled to cram all her likes, dislikes, and anxieties into a modish early 1960s novel of beatnik shenanigans in the heightened kitchen-sink mode of Shena Mackay
Literary responses Sue Townsend
Shena Mackay reviewed this book for the Times Literary Supplement.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
4454 (12 August 1988): 895
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
4459 (16 September 1988): 1012
Literary responses Julia Strachey
In an Observer review written shortly after the novel's reprinting in 1978,
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown, 1983.
121, 135
Philip Toynbee (an acquaintance of JS ) suggested that the observer is so sharp-eyed and so delicate-tongued that her book reveals...
Literary responses Bernice Rubens
Among reviewers, the Independent noted the novel's freedom from political correctness; fellow-novelist Shena Mackay called it a tragicomedy, and coined for BR 's manner the phrase Ealing comedy twinned with grand guignol.
qtd. in
Rubens, Bernice. I, Dreyfus. Abacus, 2000.
end pages
Publishing Brigid Brophy
A reprint in the Virago Modern Classics series, 1990, carries BB 's new afterword. The title-page quotes Rosalind in Shakespeare 's As You Like It: men have died from time to time and worms...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Mackay, Shena. A Bowl of Cherries. Harvester Press, 1984.
Mackay, Shena. An Advent Calendar. Cape, 1971.
Mackay, Shena. Babies in Rhinestones, and Other Stories. Heinemann, 1983.
Mackay, Shena. Collected Short Stories. Penguin, 1994.
Mackay, Shena. Death by Art Deco. Penguin, 1995.
Mackay, Shena. Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags. Heinemann, 1987.
Mackay, Shena. Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags. Moyer Bell, 1994.
Mackay, Shena. Dunedin. Heinemann, 1992.
Mackay, Shena. Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumburger; and, Toddler on the Run. Deutsch, 1964.
Mackay, Shena, editor. Friendship. Dent, 1997.
Mackay, Shena. Heligoland. Cape.
Mackay, Shena. Music Upstairs. Deutsch, 1965.
Mackay, Shena. Old Crow. Cape, 1967.
Mackay, Shena. Redhill Rococo. Heinemann, 1986.
Mackay, Shena. Redhill Rococo. Abacus, 1992.
Mackay, Shena, editor. Such Devoted Sisters: An Anthology of Stories. Virago, 1993.
Mackay, Shena. The Artist’s Widow. Cape, 1998.
Mackay, Shena. The Artist’s Widow. Moyer, 1999.
Mackay, Shena. The Atmospheric Railway. Cape, 2008.
Mackay, Shena. The Laughing Academy. Heinemann, 1993.
Mackay, Shena. The Orchard on Fire. Heinemann, 1995.
Mackay, Shena. The Orchard on Fire. Moyer Bell, 1996.
Mackay, Shena. The Orchard on Fire. Vintage, 1999.
Mackay, Shena. The World’s Smallest Unicorn, and Other Stories. Cape, 1999.