Doris (May) Lessing - Literary Style, Bibliography

Writer, born in Kermanshah, W Iran. She lived on a farm in Rhodesia, and was married and divorced twice (Lessing is her second husband's name). Her first published novel was The Grass is Singing (1950), a study of white civilization in Africa, the theme of many early works. Her experiences of life in working-class London after her arrival in 1949 are described in In Pursuit of the English (1960). In 1952 she published the first in a series of the important Martha Quest novels, Children of Violence, which is semi-autobiographical and, typically, explores political and social undercurrents in contemporary society. Her many other novels include the popular The Golden Notebook (1962), and the later books London Observed (1992), Love, Again (1996), Mara and Dann (1999), and its sequel The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow-Dog (2005). Her work also includes several collections of short stories, fantasies, and science fiction. She became a Companion of Honour in 1999.

Doris Lessing, CH (born 22 October 1919), is a British writer, born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia (Iran).

Despite this difficult and unhappy childhood, Lessing's writings about life in British Africa are filled with a compassion for both the sterile lives of the British colonists and the plight of the indigenous inhabitants. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published in London in 1949, after she had moved to Europe, where she has been living ever since.

Literary Style

Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three distinct phases: The Communist theme 1944-1956 when she was writing radically on social issues, The psychological theme 1956-1969, and after that The Sufi theme which was explored in the Canopus series (see below).

Her novel The Golden Notebook is considered a feminist classic among many scholars, but notably not by the author herself. When asked why, Lessing replies:

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion.

—Doris Lessing, The New York Times, 25 July 1982

When asked about which of her books she considers most important, Lessing chose the Canopus in Argos series.

Bibliography

The Grass Is Singing (1950) This Was the Old Chief's Country (collection) (1951) The Children of Violence Series (1952-1969): Martha Quest (1952) A Proper Marriage (1954) A Ripple from the Storm (1958) Landlocked (1965) The Four-Gated City (1969) Going Home (memoir) (1957) The Habit of Loving (collection) (1957) Wine (short story) (1957) In Pursuit of the English (nonfiction) (1960) The Golden Notebook (1962) A Man and Two Women (collection) (1963) African Stories (collection) (1964) Cat Tales: Particularly Cats (stories & nonfiction) (1967) The Old Age of El Magnifico (stories & nonfiction) (2000) Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971) The Temptation of Jack Orkney and other Stories (collection) (1972) The Summer Before the Dark (1973) A Small Personal Voice (Essays) (1974) Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) The Canopus in Argos: Archives Series (1979-1983): Shikasta (1979) The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980) The Sirian Experiments (1980) The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983) Stories (collection) (1978) Under the pseudonym Jane Somers: The Diary of a Good Neighbour (1983) If the Old Could... (1984) The Good Terrorist (1985) Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (essays, 1987) The Fifth Child (1988) African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe (memoir) (1992) Conversations (interviews, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll) (1994) Lessing's autobiography: Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (1994) Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography 1949 to 1962 (1997) Spies I Have Known (collection) (1995) Love, Again (1996) The Pit (collection) (1996) Mara and Dann (1999) Ben, in the World (a sequel to The Fifth Child) ISBN 0-06-093465-4 (2000) The Sweetest Dream ISBN 0-06-093755-6 (2001) The Grandmothers : Four Short Novels ISBN 0-06-053010-3 (2003) The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (a sequel to Mara and Dann) (2005)