Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Helen Dunmore
-
Standard Name: Dunmore, Helen
Birth Name: Helen Dunmore
Married Name: Helen Charnley
HD
first established herself as a poet, but became internationally known as a novelist when she won the Orange Prize in 1996. A prolific writer, she also had considerable success with books for children.
The Leamington Poetry Society
published a 4-page leaflet (plus cover) of EJ
's poems, titled with her name, in March 1987.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Twelve years later the British Council
published an audiocassette of poetry which features her...
JS
was, with Helen Dunmore
, U. A. Fanthorpe
, and Elizabeth Jennings
, one of the four poets featured in no. 5 of the audio-cassette series The Poetry Quartets, issued today by the...
Anthologization
Jo Shapcott
JS
had already appeared with Helen Dunmore
and Matthew Sweeney
in 1997 in Penguin Modern Poets volume 12. Writing by her was included in three anthologies in the year 2001. Andrew Motion
placed her work...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre has been filmed repeatedly for both television and the cinema, as well as being made the subject of musicals, plays, and a ballet performed by the London Children's Ballet
in 1997 and 2008...
Literary responses
Judith Kazantzis
Helen Dunmore
wrote in Poetry Review that she found these poems assured, flexible and rich with experience.
The TLS review found Kazantzis to be a dominantly visual poet, at her best in short, evocative pieces...
Literary responses
Catherine Byron
Critics praised CB
generously for this collection. A fellow-poet, Helen Dunmore
in Poetry Review, called her a taut, brilliantly focussed . . . very exact poet,
qtd. in
“Advertisement: The Getting of Vellum. Poems by Catherine Byron; About the Poet; Sample Poem; Reviews”. Salmon Poetry Online Bookshop.
and critic Adrian Henri
declared her remarkable for...
Literary responses
Kate Clanchy
Helen Dunmore
, on the cover, imagines that KC
may become a genuinely popular poet, not because she writes down to her audience, but because she writes about what we know in such a way...
Literary responses
Kate Clanchy
Lucy Scholes
wrote: The gloriously heady heat, high-running tempers and emotions are offset by the cool lightness of Clanchy's prose . . . . Meeting the English is an utter delight.
Scholes, Lucy. “Short Reviews. Meeting the English, Kate Clanchy”. The Observer, 26 May 2013, p. 41.
41
Helen Dunmore
called...
Literary responses
Catherine Cookson
At one time, CC
titles constituted one third of all the books loaned by Britain's public libraries.
qtd. in
Collini, Stefan. “The Cookson Story”. London Review of Books, 13 Dec. 2001, pp. 33-5.
33
With 123 million copies sold by the end of 1998,
Jones, Kathleen. Catherine Cookson: The Biography. Constable, 1999.
320
she was one of the best-selling...
Literary responses
Ruth Fainlight
The younger poet Helen Dunmore
, reviewing this book, found RF
's voice capable of being cutting as well as lyrical, particularly when addressing the topics of the apparatus of femininity, and of growing older.A...
Literary responses
Marina Warner
This amazingly complex novel received very positive reviews in Britain. Helen Dunmore
in The Times called the plot huge and vigorous and the novel rewarding, incisive and topical.
Marina Warner: Novelist and Mythographer. http://www.marinawarner.com.
A review for Transnational Literature noted the serendipitous coincidence which saw this novel published at the centenary of World War I, and noted that KS
addresses more than a few of the blind spots in...
Literary responses
Michèle Roberts
Reviewing this novel of considered maturity for the Guardian, Helen Dunmore
called MRa magnificent writer of the body and a poet who writes in concise and rhythmically paced prose.
Bianchi, Martha Dickinson, and Emily Dickinson. The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson. Biblo and Tannen, 1971.
11
Reception
Ruth Fainlight
RF
has drawn appreciative comment from fellow poets and writers like Helen Dunmore
, A. S. Byatt
, and Elaine Feinstein
(who has written that in a time when every poet is wooed by the...
Timeline
After 18 February 1914: Leonard Woolf published his second novel,...
Writing climate item
After 18 February 1914
Leonard Woolf
published his second novel, The Wise Virgins (which he had begun to write on his honeymoon). Quite different in genre from his first, it is a roman à clef reputedly presenting harsh caricatures...
4 September 1941: German troops laid siege to Leningrad (now...
National or international item
4 September 1941
German troops laid siege to Leningrad (now St Petersburg).
Messenger, Charles. World War Two Chronological Atlas: When, Where, How and Why. Bloomsbury, 1989.
63
Keegan, John. The Second World War. Viking, 1990.
197-8
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
271
14 May 2013: The Zoological Society of London (better...
Writing climate item
14 May 2013
The Zoological Society of London
(better known as the London Zoo
) launched a series of Writers Talks, in which a professuonal writer joined with a scientist and a zoo-keeper to talk about a particular...
Texts
Dunmore, Helen. “A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie—review”. theguardian.com.
Dunmore, Helen. A Spell of Winter. Viking, 1995.
Dunmore, Helen. Bestiary. Bloodaxe Books, 1997.
Dunmore, Helen. “Beyond the Book”. The Tide Knot, HarperCollins, 2007, pp. 1-14.
