A short life of the author
Doris May Lessing (née Tayler, 1919–2013) was born on 22 October 1919 in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran), to British parents. Her father, a World War I veteran, moved the family to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1925 to farm maize. Lessing left school at thirteen, left home at fifteen, and was largely self-educated. She was twice married and twice divorced. She moved to London in 1949 with her youngest son and the manuscript of her first novel.
Life and Career
The Grass Is Singing (1950) — about the relationship between a white woman and her black servant on a farm in Southern Rhodesia — was published to immediate acclaim. The five-novel Children of Violence sequence (1952–1969) follows Martha Quest from colonial Africa through post-war London.
The Golden Notebook (1962) is Lessing’s masterpiece and one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. It tells the story of Anna Wulf, a writer experiencing a creative and personal crisis, through four notebooks — black (about her life in Africa), red (about her political involvement with the Communist Party), yellow (a novel she is writing), and blue (a diary) — and a fifth “golden” notebook that attempts to integrate them. The novel’s formal ambition — its fragmentation, its refusal of linear narrative, its analysis of the relationship between politics, creativity, and mental health — anticipated much of the experimental fiction that followed.
Lessing’s career after The Golden Notebook was characterised by restless experimentation. Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971) is a novel about madness and mystical experience. The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) is a post-apocalyptic fable. The Canopus in Argos sequence (1979–1983) — five novels of science fiction — startled her literary admirers and was dismissed by many critics, though Lessing insisted it was among her most important work.
The Good Terrorist (1985) — about a group of incompetent political radicals in Thatcher’s London — and The Fifth Child (1988) — about a family destroyed by the birth of a monstrous child — represent a return to realist fiction of terrifying power.
She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.
Major Works and Themes
Lessing’s great subjects were the intersection of the personal and the political, the nature of consciousness, and the relationship between individual freedom and collective responsibility. She was one of the few novelists whose political commitments — she was a Communist in her youth, then became interested in Sufism — genuinely informed the structure and content of her fiction rather than merely providing subject matter.
Critical Reception and Legacy
Lessing’s reputation has been complicated by her genre-crossing: literary critics were uncomfortable with her science fiction, and science fiction readers were skeptical of her literary credentials. But her best work — The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child — is beyond dispute.
Key Works
- The Grass Is Singing (1950)
- The Golden Notebook (1962)
- The Good Terrorist (1985) — Booker shortlist
- The Fifth Child (1988)
Collecting Lessing
The Grass Is Singing (1950, Michael Joseph, London) — the debut — is scarce: $200–$800. The Crowell US edition is less valuable.
The Golden Notebook (1962, Michael Joseph/Simon & Schuster) brings $100–$400 for UK firsts, less for the US edition.
Lessing was a prolific signer. Her Nobel Prize in 2007 increased values for signed copies. She died in 2013 at ninety-four. The Michael Joseph UK first editions are the primary collected form.