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
Textual Production Sara Maitland
Zoë Fairbairns , Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts and Michelene Wandor together edited a volume of feminist fiction entitled Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production Sara Maitland
Zoë Fairbairns , Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts and Michelene Wandor together edited a collection looking back more than a decade: More Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
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...
Textual Production Zoë Fairbairns
The first project of the feminist collective formed by ZF with Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michele Roberts , and Michelene Wandor was to write and publish Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman.
1-3
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
Together with Michèle Roberts , MW edited and introduced a collection of poetry by five women, Cutlasses & Earrings, published in the Playbooks series.
Dated from the Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.
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.
Michelene Wandor. http://www.mwandor.co.uk/.
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
The Journeyman Press published Tales I Tell My Mother: A Collection of Feminist Short Stories, a collection of short stories by MW , Sara Maitland , Zoë Fairbairns , Michèle Roberts and Valerie Miner .
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
1979
Michelene Wandor. http://www.mwandor.co.uk/.
Textual Production Alison Fell
AF joined with Stef Pixner , Michèle Roberts , Tina Reid , and Ann Oosthuizen in publishing with Sheba Feminist Publishers a poetry volume, Smile Smile Smile Smile.
Fell, Alison et al. Smile Smile Smile Smile. Sheba Feminist Publishers.
prelims
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
1982
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
In the same year, she published a collection of poems entitled Touch Papers, jointly with Michèle Roberts and Judith Kazantzis . All three, she said, were feminists who were also convinced of the importance...
Textual Production Alison Fell
AF was a constant source of scenes, burlesques, and improvisations for performance by the Women's Liberation Street Theatre Group . She also wrote for a number of underground or radical papers: Ink, Islington Gutter...
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...
Textual Production Judith Kazantzis
JK 's God, An Untitled Story appeared in God: an Anthology of Fiction, edited by Stephen Hayward and Sarah Lefanu in 1992. Other contributors included Michèle Roberts , Maureen Duffy , and Bapsi Sidhwa .
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...
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.

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.
86

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.

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.

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. “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.