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
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...
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...
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
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
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.
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...
Publishing Alison Fell
The volume (Sheba's fourth ever) was decorated with exuberant drawings by Fell, Pixner , and Roberts .
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.
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 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...
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...
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...
Literary responses Judith Kazantzis
Michèle Roberts praised the handling of language here as totally satisfying.
Judith Kazantzis. http://www.judithkazantzis.com/.
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...

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.