Michèle Roberts

Standard Name: Roberts, Michèle
Birth Name: Michèle Brigitte Roberts
Married Name: Michèle Brigitte Binns
Married Name: Michèle Brigitte Latter
Used Form: Michele Roberts
MR began to write during the later twentieth century: diaries, journalism, and collaborative scenarios and improvisations, for street theatre in connection with the burgeoning women's movement of the 1970s. She has had a few plays performed since, but has published poetry, twelve novels, short stories, reviews, and a memoir. Her fiction often includes fantastic elements, and hauntings presented as fact, in its characteristically fractured narratives with perceptible sources in her own life experience. Recently responses to her work have tended to polarise: avowed feminists love her; others loathe her.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Horovitz
After her death Michèle Roberts reported that the irrepressible Michael Horovitz , while devoted to her memory, was still giving less space to female than to male poets in anthologies or at his Poetry Olympics...
Fictionalization Mary Wollstonecraft
Virginia Woolf celebrated Wollstonecraft's immortality in 1929; Marjorie Bowen wrote of her critically in 1937 yet entitled her work This Shining Woman. The future anthropologist Ruth Benedict , with her own career yet to...
Friends, Associates Zoë Fairbairns
ZF formed a feminist collective with fellow writers and socialists Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts , and Michelene Wandor .
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1978.
1-3
Friends, Associates Alison Fell
As well as Sue Todd and Buzz Goodbody , her friends at this stage (who were also her political associates) included Michèle Roberts and Marsha Rowe , with whom her friendships became lifelong.
Roberts, Michèle. Paper Houses. Virago, 2007.
70
“Inventory. Acc. 12394. Alison Fell”. National Library of Scotland.
She...
Literary responses Jo Shapcott
JS was only the second woman to win the Forward Prize (following Carol Ann Duffy and preceding Kathleen Jamie in 1994).
Crown, Sarah. “Forward Prize goes to Kathleen Jamie”. Guardian Unlimited, 6 Oct. 2004.
A commentator on the this prize described JS 's work as postfeminist, which...
Literary responses Pat Barker
This series of three working-class novels left PB highly respected, but critically pigeon-holed or typecast. Feminist critic Michèle Roberts notes that writing about women's domestic lives is popularly supposed to denote lack of imagination. Pat...
Literary responses Selima Hill
This book was another Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Hill, Selima. My Sister’s Horse. Smith/Doorstop Books, 1996.
2
On its cover Michèle Roberts is quoted writing in Time Out that SH evokes the inner childhood world we're supposed to give up as we become...
Literary responses Pat Barker
Another World was praised by several of PB 's fellow-novelists. Ruth Rendell thought it the most moving thing Barker had ever done; P. D. James called it subtle and beautifully written; Michele Roberts found...
Literary responses Judith Kazantzis
Michèle Roberts praised the handling of language here as totally satisfying.
Judith Kazantzis. 2008, http://www.judithkazantzis.com/.
Publishing Zoë Fairbairns
Photographs of contributors (including Kathy Acker , Leslie Dick , Sara Maitland , Agnes Owens , and Michèle Roberts ) adorn the back cover. Amanda Faulkner provided the illustrations.
Publishing Alison Fell
The volume (Sheba's fourth ever) was decorated with exuberant drawings by Fell, Pixner , and Roberts .
Textual Features Ali Smith
The volume features 101 different women writers, each publication emblematic of the year for which its author is featured. Its contents range from the title-inspiring Miles Franklin 's My Brilliant Career (1901) through Edith Wharton
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 Helen Dunmore
Though initially known as a poet, HD was always a prolific writer of prose. In her mid-twenties she worked on a couple of [autobiographical] novels . . . which fortunately stayed far back in the...

Timeline

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.

25 November 1982: Diana Scott issued Bread and Roses: An Anthology...

Women writers item

25 November 1982

Diana Scott issued Bread and Roses: An Anthology of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Poetry by Women Writers.
Scott, Diana, editor. Bread and Roses. Virago, 1982.

By mid-October 1983: Ursula Owen, editor of Virago Press, published...

Women writers item

By mid-October 1983

Ursula Owen , editor of Virago Press , published with them an anthology of essays: Fathers: Reflections by Daughters.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Dated from the Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.

Texts

Roberts, Michèle. “’I took a decision not to have children’”. Mslexia, No. 23, p. 11.
Roberts, Michèle. A Piece of the Night. Women’s Press, 1978.
Roberts, Michèle. All the Selves I Was. Virago Press, 1995.
Roberts, Michèle. “Anger”. The Seven Deadly Sins, edited by Alison Fell and Alison Fell, Serpent’s Tail, 1988.
Wandor, Michelene, and Michèle Roberts, editors. Cutlasses & Earrings. Playbooks, 1977.
Roberts, Michèle. Daughters of the House. Virago Press, 1992.
Roberts, Michèle. During Mother’s Absence. Virago Press, 1993.
Roberts, Michèle. Fair Exchange. Little, Brown, 1999.
Roberts, Michèle. Flesh and Blood. Virago, 1994.
Roberts, Michèle. Food, Sex and God. Virago, 1998.
Roberts, Michèle. “God”. Mslexia, Vol.
21
, pp. 28-9.
Roberts, Michèle. Impossible Saints. Little, Brown, 1997.
Roberts, Michèle. In the Red Kitchen. Methuen, 1990.
Roberts, Michèle. “Lists”. Obsession, edited by Sarah Lefanu et al., Serpent’s Tail, 1995, pp. 125-30.
Roberts, Michèle. “Milk, the first food we remember, is what we turn to when we lack comfort”. New Statesman.
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. More Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1987.
Roberts, Michèle. “Muscadet”. Mslexia, No. 77, pp. 48-9.
Roberts, Michèle. Negative Capability: A Diary of Surviving. Sandstone Press, 2020.
Roberts, Michèle. “On My Radar”. The Observer, p. New Review 3.
Roberts, Michèle. Paper Houses. Virago, 2007.
Roberts, Michèle. Playing Sardines. Virago Press, 2001.
Roberts, Michèle. Psyche and the Hurricane. Methuen, 1991.
Roberts, Michèle. “Questions and Answers”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 62-8.
Roberts, Michèle. Reader, I Married Him. Little, Brown, 2005.
Fell, Alison et al. Smile Smile Smile Smile. Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1980.