Michèle Roberts

20 May 1949

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	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. 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. 70 “Inventory. Acc. 12394. Alison Fell”. National Library of Scotland. She...
Literary responses	Judith Kazantzis	Michèle Roberts praised the handling of language here as totally satisfying. Judith Kazantzis. http://www.judithkazantzis.com/.
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	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	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. A commentator on the this prize described JS 's work as postfeminist, which...
Literary responses	Selima Hill	This book was another Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Hill, Selima. My Sister’s Horse. Smith/Doorstop Books. 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...
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	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 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 Production	Judith Kazantzis	The collaborative Touch Papers, September 1982, included poems by JK , many of which had appeared already in such places as Spare Rib, Ambit, Tribune, Samphire, New Poetry, and—this...

Timeline

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.

25 November 1982

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

By mid-October 1983

Ursula Owen , editor of Virago Press , published with them an anthology of essays: Fathers: Reflections by Daughters.

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.

, 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. “On My Radar”. The Observer, p. New Review 3.

Roberts, Michèle. Paper Houses. Virago, 2007.

Roberts, Michèle. Playing Sardines. Virago Press, 2001.

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.

Roberts, Michèle. “Taking the P”. Guardian Unlimited.

Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1978.