Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing at lit.cologne 2006
Born	(1919-10-22) 22 October 1919 Kermanshah, Iran (Persia)
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	British
Literary movement	Feminism, Modernism, Science fiction

Doris Lessing CH OBE (born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Iran on October 22, 1919) is a British writer. Awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, Lessing was described by the Swedish Academy as: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". At 87, she is the oldest person to have received the literature prize, the oldest prior recipient being Theodor Mommsen, who was 85 when he won the prize in 1902.

Biography

Lessing's parents were Emily Maude Tayler (nee McVeagh) and Captain Alfred Tayler. Her father, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife and then nurse at the Royal Free Hospital where he was recovering from his amputation.

Alfred Tayler moved his family to Kermanshah Persia (now Iran) in order to take up a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia and it was here that Lessing was born in 1919. The family then moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1925 to farm maize, when Lessing's father purchased around one thousand acres of brush. Lessing's mother attempted to lead an Edwardian life style amongst the rough environment. The farm was not successful and failed to deliver the wealth Lessing's parents had expected.

Lessing was educated at a Roman Catholic convent before being sent to an All-Girls School in Salisbury (now Harare). Lessing left school aged 13, and after that, was self-educated. She left home aged 15 and worked as a nursemaid, and it was around this time that Lessing would start reading material on politics and sociology that her employer gave her to read. She began writing around this time. During 1937, Lessing moved to Salisbury to work as a telephone operator, and she soon married her first husband, Frank Wisdom, and they had two children together, the marriage ended in 1943.

Following her divorce, Lessing was drawn to the Left Book Club, a communist book ground, and it was here that she met her second husband, Gottfried Lessing, they were married shortly after she joined the group and had a child together, before the marriage also ended in divorce in 1949. Gottfried Lessing would later become the East German ambassador to Uganda, but was accidentally killed in the 1979 rebellion against Idi Amin Dada. Lessing moved to London with her youngest son in 1949 and it was at this time her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published. Her breakthrough work was 1962s The Golden Notebook.

She declined a damehood, but accepted a Companion of Honour at the end of 1999 for "conspicuous national service". She has also been made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

Career

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 (and returned to in The Good Terrorist (1985)), The psychological theme 1956-1969, and after that The Sufi theme which was explored in a science fiction setting in the Canopus series (see below). After the sufist themes Lessing has worked in all three areas.

Lessing's switch to science fiction was not popular with many critics. For example John Leonard wrote in reference to The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 that "One of the many sins for which the 20th century will be held accountable is that it has discouraged Mrs. Lessing.... She now propagandizes on behalf of our insignificance in the cosmic razzmatazz." To which Lessing replied: "What they didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time. I also admire the classic sort of science fiction, like Blood Music, by Greg Bear. He's a great writer.".

Her novel The Golden Notebook is considered a feminist classic by some scholars, but notably not by the author herself, who later wrote that its theme of mental breakdowns as a means of healing and freeing one's self from illusions had been overlooked by critics. Lessing does not like the idea of being pigeon-holed as a feminist author. When asked why, she replies:

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 'Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.' Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.

— 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. These books show, from many different perspectives, an advanced society's efforts at Forced evolution (also see Progressor and Uplift). The Canopus series is based partly on sufi concepts, to which Lessing was introduced by Idries Shah. Earlier works of "inner space" fiction like Briefing for a Descent into Hell and Memoirs of a Survivor also connect to this theme.

Apart from this, she has also written several short stories about cats, which are her favourite animals.

Awards

• Somerset Maugham Award (1954)
• Prix Médicis étranger (1976)
• Österreichischer Staatspreis für Europäische Literatur (1981)
• Shakespeare-Preis der Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F. V. S., Hamburg (1982)
• W. H. Smith Literary Award (1986)
• Palermo Prize (1987)
• Premio Internazionale Mondello (1987)
• Premio Grinzane Cavour (1989)
• James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize (1995)
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1995)
• Premio Internacional Catalunya (1999)
• David Cohen British Literary Prize (2001)
• Companion of Honour from the Royal Society of Literature (2001)
• Premio Principe de Asturias (2001)
• S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Award (2002)
• Nobel Prize in Literature (2007)

Speaking events

As author of the Canopus in Argos series, Lessing was Writer Guest of Honor at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), and made a well-received speech in which she described her science-fictional Memoirs of a Survivor as "an attempt at an autobiography." Unlike some mainstream authors, she has never hesitated to admit that she writes science fiction.

Doris participated in the Bath Literature Festival 2007 (Bath, England) which was her first time at the festival. During her presentation titled "Fine Fiction" she read from her recent book "The Cleft", and fielded questions ranging from feminism to her sense of humor. Doris announced that she had been going deaf within the last year, which doctors said were a result of her taking daily anti-malarial pills as a child. She stated that her brother had gone deaf in his 20s.

Works

• The Grass Is Singing (1950)
• This Was the Old Chief's Country (collection) (1951)
• Five (short stories) (1953)
• The Children of Violence Series (1952-1969):
  • Martha Quest (1952)
  • Five (short stories) (1953)
  • 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)
  • Particularly Cats and Rufus the Survivor (1993)
  • 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 Wind Blows Away Our Words (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)
• The Cleft (2007)

External links

• Doris Lessing homepage created by Jan Hanford
• Doris Lessing on MySpace
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• Doris Lessing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Audio Interviews with Doris Lessing by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
• Template:Contemporary writers
• Joyce Carol Oates on Doris Lessing
• 1988, 1992 audio interview with Doris Lessing by Don Swaim