Doris May Lessing was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia, 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).
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd, is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer.
The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef because the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's experiences with what may have been clinical depression or bipolar II disorder. Plath died by suicide a month after its first United Kingdom publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband Ted Hughes and her mother. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.
Charlotte Mary Mew was an English poet whose work spans the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism.
Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf published on 14 May 1925. It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, a novel by Agatha Christie, was published in the UK in 1962 and a year later in the US under the title The Mirror Crack'd. The story features amateur detective Miss Marple solving a mystery in St. Mary Mead.
The Grass Is Singing, published in 1950, is the first novel by the British author Doris Lessing. It takes place in Southern Rhodesia, in southern Africa, during the 1940s and deals with the racial politics between whites and blacks in that country. It follows an emotionally immature woman's hasty marriage to an unsuccessful farmer, and her ensuing mental deterioration, her murder, and the colonial British society's reactions to it. The novel created a sensation when it was first published and became an instant success in Europe and the United States. A Swedish-made adaptation, Gräset Sjunger, was filmed in English in 1981.
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five is a 1980 science fiction novel by Doris Lessing. It is the second book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series, the first being Shikasta (1979). It was first published in the United States in March 1980 by Alfred A. Knopf, and in the United Kingdom in May 1980 by Jonathan Cape.
Mary Anne Sadlier was an Irish author. Sadlier published roughly twenty-three novels and numerous stories. She wrote for Irish immigrants in both the United States and Canada, encouraging them to attend mass and retain the Catholic faith. In so doing, Sadlier also addressed the related themes of anti-Catholicism, the Irish Famine, emigration, and domestic work. Her writings and translations are often found under the name Mrs. J. Sadlier. Earlier in her career, from 1840 to 1845, some of her works were published under the name "Anne Flinders".
The Four-Gated City, published in 1969, is the concluding novel in British Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing's five-volume, semi-autobiographical series The Children of Violence, which she began, in 1952, with Martha Quest. In The Four-Gated City Lessing moves the setting from Zambesia, a fictionalized version of Southern Rhodesia, to London. Martha "is integrally part of the social history of the time - the Cold War, the Aldermaston Marches, Swinging London, the deepening of poverty and social anarchy." The novel extends into science fiction, depicting a dystopian future following the destruction of Britain.
The Good Terrorist is a 1985 political novel written by the British novelist Doris Lessing. The book's protagonist is the naïve drifter Alice, who squats with a group of radicals in London and is drawn into their terrorist activities.
The Southern Rhodesia Communist Party was an illegal, underground communist party established in Southern Rhodesia which was formed in large part due to the minority settler rule, which had an immensely repressive structure. It emerged in 1941 from a split in the Rhodesia Labour Party. The party consisted of a small, and predominantly white, membership. During the parties existence it had links to other communist parties such as the Communist Party of South Africa and the Communist Party of Great Britain. The party disappeared in the late 1940s, with the exact date of its dissolution not being known. Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing author of various works including “The Grass is Singing,” is the most well known member of the Southern Rhodesian Communist Party.
Rosa Nouchette Carey was an English children's writer and popular novelist, whose works reflected the values of her time and were thought of as wholesome for girls. However, they are "not entirely bereft of grit and realism."
Alfred and Emily is a book by Doris Lessing in a new hybrid form. Part fiction, part notebook, part memoir, it was first published in 2008. The book is based on the lives of Lessing's parents. Part one is a novella, a fictional portrait of how her parents' lives might have been without the interruption of the First World War. Part two is a retelling of how her parents' lives really developed.
Martha Quest (1952) is the second novel of British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing, and the first of the five-volume semi-autobiographical Children of Violence series, which traces Martha Quest’s life to middle age. The other volumes in The Children of Violence are A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969).
Eliza Anna Farman Pratt (1837–1907) was an American writer of children's literature, best known for editing Wide Awake magazine for 16 years, starting in 1875.
Troubled Blood is the fifth novel in the Cormoran Strike series, written by J. K. Rowling and published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The novel was released on 15 September 2020.
Zimbabwean literature is literature produced by authors from Zimbabwe or in the Zimbabwean Diaspora. The tradition of literature starts with a long oral tradition, was influence heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and acts as a form of protest to the government.
The 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the British novelist Doris Lessing (1919–2013) as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny." Lessing was the oldest person ever, at age 88, to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature followed by the German historian Theodor Mommsen, who received the prize at age 85. She is also the third-oldest Nobel laureate in any category. She became the 11th woman to be awarded the prize.
