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Doris Lessing

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Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer Doris May Lessing Template:Post-nom Template:Post-nom (Template:Nee Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Persia, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).

Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Lessing was the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, at age 87.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Editors at BBC. "Author Lessing wins Nobel honour", BBC News, 23 October 2007. Retrieved 12 October 2007.</ref><ref name="oldest">Marchand, Philip. "Doris Lessing oldest to win literature award". Toronto Star, 12 October 2007. Retrieved 13 October 2007.</ref>

In 2001 Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008 The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".<ref>(5 January 2008). Template:Cite web. The Times. Retrieved 25 April 2011.</ref>

Life

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Early life

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Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia, on 22 October 1919, to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler (née McVeagh), both British subjects.<ref name="englishbloom">Template:Cite news</ref> Her father, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife, a nurse, at the Royal Free Hospital in London where he was recovering from his amputation.<ref name="broken">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="scifirefa">Template:Cite web</ref> The couple moved to Persia, for Alfred to take a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia.<ref name="space fiction">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="bbcref1">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1925 the family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to farm maize and other crops on about Template:Convert of bush that Alfred bought. In the rough environment, his wife Emily aspired to lead an Edwardian lifestyle. It might have been possible had the family been wealthy; in reality, they were short of money and the farm delivered very little income.<ref name="dobref"/>

As a girl Doris was educated first at the Dominican Convent High School, a Roman Catholic convent all-girls school in the Southern Rhodesian capital of Salisbury (now Harare).<ref name="UnderMySkin" /> Then followed a year at Girls High School in Salisbury.<ref name="UnderMySkin">Template:Cite book</ref> She left school at age 13 and was self-educated from then on. She left home at 15 and worked as a nursemaid. She started reading material that her employer gave her on politics and sociology<ref name="scifirefa"/> and began writing around this time.

In 1937 Doris moved to Salisbury to work as a telephone operator, and she soon married her first husband, civil servant Frank Wisdom, with whom she had two children (John, 1940–1992, and Jean, born in 1941), before the marriage ended in 1943.<ref name="scifirefa"/> Lessing left the family home in 1943, leaving the two children with their father.<ref name = "telegraph"/>

Move to London; political views

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After the divorce, Doris's interest was drawn to the community around the Left Book Club, an organisation she had joined the year before.<ref name="dobref">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It was here that she met her future second husband, Gottfried Lessing. They married shortly after she joined the group, and had a child together (Peter, 1946–2013), before they divorced in 1949. She did not marry again.<ref name="scifirefa"/> Lessing also had a love affair with RAF serviceman John Whitehorn (brother of journalist Katharine Whitehorn), who was stationed in Southern Rhodesia, and wrote him ninety letters between 1943 and 1949.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Lessing moved to London in 1949 with her younger son, Peter, to pursue her writing career and socialist beliefs, but left the two older children with their father Frank Wisdom. She later said that at the time she saw no choice: "For a long time I felt I had done a very brave thing. There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. I felt I wasn't the best person to bring them up. I would have ended up an alcoholic or a frustrated intellectual like my mother."<ref>"Lowering the Bar. When bad mothers give us hope" Template:Webarchive, Newsweek, 6 May 2010. Retrieved 9 May 2010.</ref>

As well as campaigning against nuclear arms, she was an active opponent of apartheid, which led her to being banned from South Africa and Rhodesia in 1956 for many years.<ref name=obit /> In the same year, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary, she left the Communist Party of Great Britain.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the 1980s, when Lessing was vocal in her opposition to Soviet actions in Afghanistan,<ref>"Doris Lessing blows the veil of romanticism off Afghanistan", The Christian Science Monitor, 14 January 1988.</ref> she gave her views on feminism, communism and science fiction in an interview with The New York Times.<ref name="space fiction"/>

On 21 August 2015, a five-volume secret file on Lessing, built up by both MI5 and MI6, was made public and placed in The National Archives.<ref>Shirbon, Estelle, "British spies reveal file on Nobel-winner Doris Lessing", Reuters, 21 August 2015.</ref> The file, which contains documents that are redacted in parts, shows Lessing was under surveillance by MI5 and MI6 for around twenty years, from the early-1940s onwards. Her associations with communist organisations and political activism were reported to be the reasons for the surveillance of Lessing.<ref>Norton-Taylor, Richard, "MI5 spied on Doris Lessing for 20 years, declassified documents reveal", The Guardian, 21 August 2015.</ref>

Disaffected, and turning away from Marxist political philosophy, Lessing became increasingly absorbed with mystical and spiritual matters, devoting herself especially to the Sufi tradition.<ref>Hajer Elarem, 2015. "A Quest for Selfhood: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Female Identity in Doris Lessing's Early Fiction", academic paper. Université de Franche-Comté.</ref>

Literary career

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At the age of fifteen, Lessing began to sell her stories to magazines.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published in 1950.<ref name="dobref" /> The work that gained her international attention, The Golden Notebook, was published in 1962.<ref name="bbcref1"/> By the time of her death, she had published more than 50 novels, some under a pseudonym.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

File:DorisLessing1984.jpg
Lessing in 1984

In 1982 Lessing wrote two novels under the literary pseudonym Jane Somers to show the difficulty new authors face in trying to get their work printed. The novels were rejected by Lessing's UK publisher but later accepted by another English publisher, Michael Joseph, and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf. The Diary of a Good Neighbour<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> was published in Britain and the US in 1983 and If the Old Could in both countries in 1984,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> both as written by Jane Somers. In 1984 both novels were republished in both countries (Viking Books publishing in the US), this time under one cover, with the title The Diaries of Jane Somers: The Diary of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could, listing Doris Lessing as author.<ref>Hanft, Adam. "When Doris Lessing Became Jane Somers and Tricked the Publishing World (And Possibly Herself In the Process)". The Huffington Post, 10 November 2007. Updated 25 May 2011. Retrieved 7 September 2017.</ref>

Lessing declined a damehood (DBE) in 1992 as an honour linked to a non-existent Empire; she had previously declined an OBE in 1977.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Later she accepted appointment as a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour at the end of 1999 for "conspicuous national service".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She was also made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2007 Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.<ref name="winsprise">Rich, Motoko and Lyall, Sarah. "Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 October 2007.</ref> She received the prize at the age of 88 years 52 days, making her the oldest winner of the literature prize at the time of the award and the third-oldest Nobel laureate in any category (after Leonid Hurwicz and Raymond Davis Jr.).<ref>Hurwicz won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 2007 aged 90. Davis received the 2002 Physics Prize at 88 years 57 days. Their birth dates are shown in their biographies at the Nobel Prize website, which states that the awards are given annually on 10 December.</ref><ref>Pierre-Henry Deshayes. "Doris Lessing wins Nobel Literature Prize" Template:Webarchive. Herald Sun. Retrieved 16 October 2007.</ref> She was also only the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy in its 106-year history.<ref>Reynolds, Nigel. "Doris Lessing wins Nobel prize for literature". The Telegraph. Retrieved 15 October 2007.</ref> In 2017, just 10 years later, her Nobel medal was put up for auction.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=flood2017>Template:Cite web</ref> Previously only one Nobel medal for literature had been sold at auction, for André Gide in 2016.<ref name=flood2017/>

Illness and death

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During the late-1990s Lessing had a stroke,<ref name=progressive/> which stopped her from travelling during her later years.<ref name=Verongos>Template:Cite news</ref> She was still able to attend the theatre and opera.<ref name=progressive>Template:Cite web</ref> She began to focus her mind on death, for example asking herself if she would have time to finish a new book.<ref name=obit>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=progressive /> She died on 17 November 2013, aged 94, at her home in West Hampstead, London, of kidney failure, sepsis and a chest infection,<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> predeceased by her two sons, but was survived by her daughter, Jean, who lives in South Africa.<ref>"Author Doris Lessing dies aged 94", BBC. Retrieved 17 November 2013.</ref>

She was remembered with a humanist funeral service.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Fiction

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File:Idries Shah.gif
Idries Shah, who introduced Lessing to Sufism<ref name="Lessingon">Template:Cite web</ref>

Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three distinct phases.

During her Communist phase (1944–56) she wrote radically about social issues, a theme to which she returned in The Good Terrorist (1985). Doris Lessing's first novel, The Grass Is Singing, as well as the short stories later collected in African Stories, are set in Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) where she was then living.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

This was followed by a psychological phase from 1956 to 1969, including the Golden Notebook and the "Children of Violence" quintet.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Third came the Sufi phase, explored in her 70s work, and in the Canopus in Argos sequence of science fiction (or as she preferred to put it "space fiction") novels and novellas.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lessing's Canopus sequence received a mixed reception from mainstream literary critics. John Leonard praised her 1980 novel The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five in The New York Times,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> but in 1982 John Leonard wrote in reference to The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 that "[o]ne of the many sins for which the 20th century will be held accountable is that it has discouraged Mrs. Lessing... She now propagandises on behalf of our insignificance in the cosmic razzmatazz",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> to which Lessing replied: "What they didn't realise 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."<ref>Doris Lessing: Hot Dawns, interview by Harvey Blume in Boston Book Review</ref> She attended the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention as its Writer Guest of Honor. Here she made a speech in which she described her dystopian novel Memoirs of a Survivor as "an attempt at an autobiography".<ref>"Guest of Honor Speech", in Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches, edited by Mike Resnick and Joe Siclari (Deerfield, IL: ISFIC Press, 2006), p. 192.</ref>

The Canopus in Argos novels present an advanced interstellar society's efforts to accelerate the evolution of other worlds, including Earth. Using Sufi concepts, to which Lessing had been introduced in the mid-1960s by her "good friend and teacher" Idries Shah,<ref name="Lessingon"/> the series of novels also uses an approach similar to that employed by the early 20th-century mystic G. I. Gurdjieff in his work All and Everything. Earlier works of "inner space" fiction like Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971) and Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) also connect to this theme. Lessing's interest had turned to Sufism after coming to the realisation that Marxism ignored spiritual matters, leaving her disillusioned.<ref>"Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation and Memory", Volume 31 of Routledge research in postcolonial literatures, Dennis Walder, Taylor & Francis ltd, 2010, p92. Template:ISBN.</ref>

Lessing's novel The Golden Notebook is considered a feminist classic by some scholars,<ref name=NPR>Template:Cite news</ref> 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. She also regretted that critics failed to appreciate the exceptional structure of the novel. She explained in Walking in the Shade that she modelled Molly partly on her good friend Joan Rodker, the daughter of the modernist poet and publisher John Rodker.<ref>Scott, Lynda, "Lessing's Early and Transitional Novels: The Beginnings of a Sense of Selfhood", Deepsouth, vol. 4, no. 1 (Autumn 1998). Retrieved 17 October 2007.</ref>

Lessing did not like being pigeonholed as a feminist author. When asked why, she explained: Template:Blockquote

Doris Lessing Society

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The Doris Lessing Society is dedicated to supporting the scholarly study of Lessing's work. The formal structure of the Society dates from January 1977, when the first issue of the Doris Lessing Newsletter was published. In 2002 the Newsletter became the academic journal Doris Lessing Studies. The Society also organises panels at the Modern Languages Association (MLA) annual Conventions and has held two international conferences in New Orleans in 2004 and Leeds in 2007.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Archives

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Lessing's literary archive is held by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. The 76 archival boxes of Lessing's materials at the Ransom Center contain nearly all of her extant manuscripts and typescripts up to 2008. Original material for Lessing's early books is assumed not to exist because she kept none of her early manuscripts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa holds a smaller collection.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The University of East Anglia's British Archive for Contemporary Writing holds Doris Lessing's personal archive: a vast collection of professional and personal correspondence, including the Whitehorn letters, a collection of love letters from the 1940s, written when Lessing was still living in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). The collection also includes forty years of personal diaries. Some of the archive remains embargoed during the writing of Lessing's official biography.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards

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Publications

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Novels

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Children of Violence series (1952–1969)
The Canopus in Argos: Archives series (1979–1983)

Opera libretti

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Comics

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Drama

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  • Each His Own Wilderness (three plays, 1959)
  • Play with a Tiger (1962)

Poetry collections

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  • Fourteen Poems (1959)
  • The Wolf People – INPOPA Anthology 2002 (poems by Lessing, Robert Twigger and T.H. Benson, 2002)

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Short story collections

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  • This Was the Old Chief's Country (1951)
  • Five Short Novels (1953)
  • Through the Tunnel (1955)<ref>Lessing, Doris. "Through the Tunnel." The New Yorker, 6 Aug. 1955, p. 67.</ref>
  • The Habit of Loving (1957)
  • A Man and Two Women (1963)
  • African Stories (1964)
  • Winter in July (1966)
  • The Black Madonna (1966)
  • The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (1972)
  • This Was the Old Chief's Country: Collected African Stories, Vol. 1 (1973)
  • The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories, Vol. 2 (1973)
  • To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories, Vol. 1 (1978)
  • The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories, Vol. 2 (1978)
  • Stories (1978)
  • London Observed: Stories and Sketches (1992)
  • The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches (1992)
  • Spies I Have Known (1995)
  • The Pit (1996)
  • The Grandmothers: Four Short Novels (2003) (filmed as Two Mothers)
Cat Tales
  • Particularly Cats (stories and nonfiction, 1967)
  • Particularly Cats and Rufus the Survivor (stories and nonfiction, 1993)
  • The Old Age of El Magnifico (stories and nonfiction, 2000)
  • On Cats (2002) – omnibus edition containing the above three books

Autobiography and memoirs

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Other non-fiction

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  • In Pursuit of the English (1960)
  • Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (essays, 1987)
  • The Wind Blows Away Our Words (1987)
  • A Small Personal Voice (essays, 1994)
  • Conversations (interviews, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, 1994)
  • Putting the Questions Differently (interviews, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, 1996)
  • Time Bites: Views and Reviews (essays, 2004)
  • On Not Winning the Nobel Prize (Nobel Lecture, 2007, published 2008)

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See also

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References

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Further reading

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