Doris Lessing

Possible Lines of ApproachFeminismRelationshipsPowerIdentityStyleCareer stages

Notes on Approaching Particular Works“To Room Nineteen”

Questions for DiscussionCritical Viewpoints/Reception HistoryOther Works of InterestLinks

Possible Lines of Approach

Feminism

Lessing is frequently cited as a feminist icon, the author of a book (The GoldenNotebook) widely considered a feminist classic, expressive of female anger andaggression, of the female desire for bodily, intellectual, and emotional freedom. Attackedas unfeminine at its publication, The Golden Notebook was identified as a foundationalfeminist literary work by the Swedish academy, which said that “it belongs to the handfulof books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship” (seeMotoko Rich and Sarah Lyall, “Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature,” The NewYork Times [11 October 2007]). Jane Friedman, the president of HarperCollins, Lessing’sAmerican and British publisher, said on the occasion of Lessing’s Nobel prize win that“for women and for literature, Doris Lessing is a mother to us all” (Rich and Lyall,“Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize”). Lessing herself acknowledged the importance of thenovel for women, writing in her introduction to the 1971 edition of The GoldenNotebook, “Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came asa great surprise.”

Certainly it is possible to read “To Room Nineteen” as a work with feminist concerns or,at least, a work of concern to feminists. In setting out a woman’s experience of marriageand motherhood, the expectations, pressures, and burdens placed on her by husband andchildren, the inability to regain herself as an individual, an essential self, having enteredinto these institutions, “To Room Nineteen” partakes of an important tradition inliterature, asserting the need for female self-expression. The story makes all too clear thedestructive results of patriarchy, its definitions and standards, and the consequences ofbeing denied the room to find and nourish the fundamental self.

Still, it is important to note that Lessing has had an ambivalent relationship withfeminism. She has repeatedly repudiated the idea that she herself was a feminist, despitebeing hailed as a feminist pioneer, earning the scorn of some critics. Make sure to havestudents consider the ways in which a story like “To Room Nineteen” can be read as a farmore ambiguous statement than it may first appear to be. What are we to make of Susan’ssuicide, for example?

Relationships

Lessing is a writer concerned with chronicling relationships, with their subtle shifts andbalances of power, their surfaces and their depths, their advantages and shortcomings.“To Room Nineteen” is, after all, the story of a marriage, or rather the story of a “failureof intelligence” in a marriage “grounded in intelligence.” Though students will likely betempted to focus on Susan and her search for a space of her own, her attempt to discoverand recover herself, you may find it profitable to direct their attention to her marriage aspart of the context for this quest. How is marriage defined by the Rawlingses? By thesociety around them? How do they conduct their relationship? Are they too rational ornot rational enough? Why does Susan experience the relationship so differently fromMatthew? What might be his feelings about their marriage and its demise? Mostimportantly, perhaps, ask students how their reading of the story may change when theyconsider its depiction of a relationship rather than of an individual.

Power

Lessing is interested in power within relationships but also in its operations in a largersocial context. One possibility for discussing “To Room Nineteen” is to look at thepolitical and social context of the story’s setting, to consider the distribution of power insociety and the reflection of that distribution in individual lives.

You may also mention here Lessing’s background. Born in Persia (present-day Iran) andraised in colonial Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), the child of British colonialists, afemale writer at a time when women’s voices were routinely left unheard, an outsider inall contexts, she was acutely aware of difference, of injustice, of the often overwhelmingforces shaping and distorting individual lives. In an appraisal of Lessing’s career,Michiko Kakutani observed that “Lessing’s childhood in Rhodesia seems to haveheightened her awareness of the inequities of race and class and the inescapableconnection between the political and the personal” (“Tracing the Internal Tug of War atthe Heart of Human Life,” The New York Times [12 October 2007]).

Identity

Another powerful theme in Lessing’s work is identity, the conceptions we hold ofourselves and the illusions and bitter truths we consider dear. Much of “To RoomNineteen” focuses on Susan Rawlings’s attempt to identify herself, to understand “theessential Susan.” She is unable to do so. Why not? What limits are placed on her ability

to see and properly identify herself? What do such limitations have to do with Susan’ssuicide, her choice of self-annihilation?

Much of Lessing’s work is concerned with what Michiko Kakutani has identified as“certain persistent themes: the relationship between the individual and society; thetension between domesticity and freedom, responsibility and independence; and the tugof war between human will and the imperatives of love, betrayal and ideological faith”(“Tracing the Internal Tug of War at the Heart of Human Life”). Identity—the struggle toestablish it, to define it, to defend it, to conform it and reshape it and refine it—is perhapsthe unifying thread of Lessing’s oeuvre, the constant that remains across shiftingideologies, concerns, and interests.

Style

Because it is so tempting to focus on the thematic aspects of Lessing’s work, you mayfind students neglecting to consider Lessing’s style, her careful crafting of narrative,although a discussion of the story’s compositional strategies may be productive. FionaBarnes argues that Lessing’s “stories benefit from the creative tension caused by theunsettling contrast between the ethical, at times political, commitment of her vision andthe cool, frequently humorous, detachment of her ironic tone” (see “Doris Lessing” in theDictionary of Literary Biography). Does such an assessment seem applicable to “ToRoom Nineteen”? What might be the ethical and political implications of the story?Where and how are these implications emphasized? Where do we find narratorialdetachment? What are the benefits of the third-person narration? How does Lessingdeploy free-indirect discourse? Is this finally a successful strategy? How might the storybe different if told from another perspective?

Career Stages

Lessing’s career is generally divided into three phases: the Communist, lasting untilabout 1956, marked by a commitment to radical social issues; the psychological, datingfrom 1956 to 1969, defined by a focus on exploring the inner lives of women, perhapsmost readily evident in The Golden Notebook (1962); and the Sufi, explored in herscience-fiction work. A number of critics have bemoaned the science-fiction turnLessing’s work has taken, decrying what they perceive as her loss of interest in politicallyand socially committed writing; for example, when she won the Nobel, the critic HaroldBloom notoriously called the choice “pure political correctness,” telling the AssociatedPress, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirablequalities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable … fourth-rate sciencefiction” (see “Doris Lessing wins Nobel prize,” The Guardian [11 October 2007]).

The notion of such discrete phases is of course oversimplified. Lessing has certainlyshown an interest in emotional and ethical complexities and in psychologicalinvestigation throughout her work, and she has repeatedly returned to political, historical,and sociological explorations, notably in The Good Terrorist, her 1985 novel aboutradicals in London. Still, it is potentially worthwhile to think about Lessing as an

evolving artist, a writer whose prodigious output has shaped and reshaped, formed andreformed itself. It may be interesting as well to think of the ways in which her interestsand concerns intersect and overlap in individual works, the subtle ways she combines anumber of influences, a variety of approaches.

Notes on Approaching Particular Works

“To Room Nineteen”

Form: Short story.

Background/Approaches: One possibility for entering into a discussion of “To RoomNineteen” is to begin at the end: were students surprised by the story’s conclusion? Whyor why not? It may be interesting as well to have students reread the story, to think aboutwhat they might notice knowing the story’s ending. Do they notice any possibleforeshadowing? At what points in the story does the ending seem inevitable? Wheremight the text suggest other possibilities, hold out hope? Ask, too, that students considerwhat the ending suggests about the story’s main concerns. What does Susan’s suicidesuggest about marriage? About motherhood? About the general condition and situation ofwomen in the England of the 1970s? Though students might see the time of the story’ssetting as ancient history, it is also recognizable, and you might wish to note that “ToRoom Nineteen” dramatizes female experience long after women had won the right tovote, to learn, to work. What, then, might the story be suggesting about “femaleexperience”? What might Lessing be suggesting is necessary for female fulfillment? Forfemale happiness? How might this be different from the arguments of earlier feminists?How might this be an extension of the same argument?

Perhaps as part of the above discussion, you may want to ask students what they make ofSusan Rawlings’s unhappiness. What, precisely, makes her restless? Afraid? Depressed?Are such reasons convincing? Is Susan’s longing specifically female? How so? Does sheherself have any sense of what leads her to feel as she does? What are students’ reactionsto Susan’s assertion that she can never feel free, never enjoy a moment when she does notneed to remind herself of tasks and duties and obligations and responsibilities? Can weinterpret her husband’s response that he too is burdened with tremendous responsibility tohis family in the same way, or is there something profoundly unique, perhaps singularlyfemale, in Susan’s sense of her life? How sympathetic, ultimately, is Susan as acharacter? Do we feel for her plight, or are we rather tempted to see her as somehow atfault? How does the Rawlings’s social class influence our response? That is, do Susan’scomplaints seem legitimate given that she has a great deal of (paid) help around thehouse? What are we to make of the fact that the women hired to cook for the family andto watch the children have no real voice? What are Susan’s feelings about these women?What might such feelings suggest about the larger themes of Lessing’s story?

Consider too the relationship of the Rawlingses. To what extent does Matthew cause hiswife’s unhappiness? Are his infidelities to blame for Susan’s feelings of restlessness, ofanger, of alienation? Does the story seem to side with Susan? Does it introduce

complications with suggestions that Matthew too might be unhappy? To what extentmight “To Room Nineteen” be a story about the disappointment and disillusionmentinherent in the institution of marriage? What compromises must both of the Rawlingsesmake for their marriage and family? Are such sacrifices ultimately “worth” it? Why doesSusan feel her sacrifices so much more acutely than does Matthew? That is, what copingmechanisms are available to Matthew, and to men more generally? How do his affairswith other women help him come to terms with the state of his life, his responsibilitiesand commitments? Why is such an outlet not a real option for Susan? Why does she feelcompelled to make up an affair, a lover? Why is Matthew relieved to hear Susan’s“confession”? That is, why do both instinctively seem to feel that the real problem ofSusan’s desire for solitude, her overwhelming need to be alone is far worse thaninfidelity? Why does adultery seem “reasonable,” whereas Susan’s actual behaviorappear to be unacceptable, impossible to explain and to understand?

In discussing marriage as an element in “To Room Nineteen,” ask students to considerthe story’s opening lines: “This is a story, I suppose, about a failure in intelligence.”What is meant, in this context, by “intelligence”? Does the story suggest that a marriagecannot or ought not be based on “intelligence”? Is reason, particularly prioritized in theway the Rawlingses prioritize it, incompatible with other emotions necessary forfulfillment? What is “intelligent love”? Is it, finally, an oxymoron, an impossibility? Whydoes “intelligence” forbid Susan to use “the dramatic words, unfaithful, forgive, and therest” when Matthew confesses his first infidelity? Is “intelligence”—reason, the need toalways, always be rational—the devil Susan feels oppressing her? Though it arguablybenefits neither partner, why does everyone—Susan, Matthew, their friends—seem tobelieve their “intelligence” is such a virtue? Where does this particular notion ofintelligence come from? You may wish to note that both Susan and Matthew read“psychological, anthropological, sociological” books in order to learn about marriage andpartnership. Why do these books fail them? Or, to put the question another way, howmight the books themselves be the problem? Ask students to consider their own notionsabout marriage, about what they are taught to expect from long-term committedrelationships. How are their ideas shaped by the culture around them? What do moviesand books and television shows contribute to their understanding? How are Susan andMatthew influenced by their culture? How does that culture damage their sense ofthemselves as individuals once they have become a couple? Why does Susan experiencethe change, the shift to wife-and-motherhood so painfully? Why does she find herselfunable to identify “this essential Susan,” unable to articulate and acknowledge herselfoutside the context of marriage and motherhood? What might the fact that Susan gives upher job when she first becomes pregnant signify? What, exactly, does Susan resent? “Itwas poisoning her,” we are informed of Susan’s resentment. “(She looked at this emotionand thought it was absurd. Yet she felt it.) She was a prisoner. (She looked at this thoughttoo, and it was no good telling herself it was a ridiculous one.)” What imprisons her?

Another important element of the story is space. You might want to begin yourdiscussion about the importance, to Susan, of “a room of her own” by asking students toconsider the significance of the story’s title. What is signaled by the fact that the texttakes as its name the number of the hotel room that Susan rents? What is the importance

of that room? Why does Susan feel that she must have this room? Susan lives in a largehouse, one that clearly offers a great deal of space. Why, then, does she feel compelled toseek out other rooms? Pause here to consider who truly owns the home where Susanresides with her husband and children. We are told that the Rawlingses relocated toRichmond after Susan became pregnant and quit her job, suggesting that the house is paidfor by Matthew. Might this be one reason Susan feels herself alienated from her home,growing increasingly restless as her role there is diminished by her youngest childrengoing to school? What might a room outside this house mean to her? Why does she feelthat she can find herself, that she can exist in such a room? What are we to make of theway Susan spends her time in Room Nineteen? Why does the room lose its allure onceMatthew has learned of it?

In concluding your discussion of “To Room Nineteen,” ask students to consider the waysin which Lessing’s story partakes of the tradition of feminist literature and the ways itdeparts from this tradition. That is, how might we best make sense of Susan’spredicament as an essentially female one? How might we understand her choices andactions as part of a feminist struggle? What is lost in such a reading? What might begained in reading “To Room Nineteen” as a story about individuals, a study of a woman’sbreakdown? Ask students to pay attention to craft and technique: what writing choicesdoes Lessing make in crafting her story, and how do these choices influence the way weread?

Connections: Perhaps the most obvious but nonetheless worthwhile connection can bemade with Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Lessing’s story and Woolf’s essayboth demonstrate the connections between female identity and space, the need for a roomof one’s own and the tragic consequences of lost selves, of abandoned female desires, ofcompromised values and worths. Lessing’s work, as its title suggests, is clearly indebtedto Woolf’s insights; both are today considered feminist masterpieces.

“To Room Nineteen” can also be profitably discussed in relation to other stories aboutmarriage, individual identity, and the impossibility of real intimacy and knowledge. Anumber of modernist stories deal with the topic, most notably James Joyce’s “The Dead”and D.H. Lawrence’s “Odor of Chrysanthemums.” For a far more Victorian vision of thefemale role in marriage, see Coventry Patmore’s The Angel in the House.

Katherine Mansfield’s “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” might make an interestingcompanion piece, as a story about frustrated womanhood and the loss of the individualself in the care for another, and as a modernist work written by a woman.

Another possibility, along similar lines, is the American author Kate Chopin’s TheAwakening, which chronicles a woman’s ultimately fatal attempt to escape conventionalmarriage and motherhood; like Susan Rawlings, Chopin’s heroine Edna Pontellier endsthe story by choosing death, by committing suicide. Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “TheYellow Wallpaper,” another story by an American author, might also be helpful inillustrating the descent into madness by a woman who feels trapped by marriage andmotherhood. Of particular interest here might be the emphasis on space, on the obsessive

and destructive connections made by a woman to a space she is usually denied. As well, aparallel might be drawn between Matthew and John, the husband of the narrator of “TheYellow Wallpaper,” both of whom insist on responding to emotion with reason, denyingtheir wives a chance at real self-expression.

In Rereading Doris Lessing: Narrative Patterns of Doubling and Repetition (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1987), Claire Sprague suggests that T.S. Eliot’s TheWaste Land—with its depiction of relationships between men and women irreparablyundone by breakdowns in communication—provides the subtext for “To RoomNineteen.” Eliot’s poem and Lessing’s story might make an interesting pairing, a contrastin the male and female visions of the limitations and impositions of relationships betweenthe sexes.

Questions for Discussion

1. What is the significance of Susan’s suicide at the end of “To Room Nineteen”? Is ita gesture of defeat or of potential liberation? Can she be said to be “living” beforeshe chooses to end her life?

2. What is the conception of female selfhood in “To Room Nineteen”? What mightthis sense of identity have to do with space? How does Lessing’s story relate toVirginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”?

3. Is Susan’s unhappiness connected to marriage? To motherhood? To socialconceptions of both of these institutions?

4. What does “To Room Nineteen” suggest about the possibility of real intimacybetween men and women? The possibility of knowing another person fully? Howmight the story’s vision of relationships be best understood in its historical context?

5. What is meant by the opening lines of “To Room Nineteen”? How might thisbeginning be best understood in the context of the story’s conclusion? What,exactly, is meant by “intelligence”? Why is “intelligence” ultimately a faultygrounding for marriage?

6. Discuss Susan’s relationships with other women in the story. What might we makeof the absence of female friends? How does Susan relate to the women sheencounters in the course of “To Room Nineteen”? What might we make of the factthat most of these women—Mrs. Parkes and Sophie—are far below her ineconomic class?

7. Susan frequently perceives her emotions as “ridiculous,” unreasonable, irrational.Why might she experience her sense of her situation in this way? What does thissense of things suggest about her and her position?

8. What might it meant that the “essential Susan” is “in abeyance”? And what of thefact that Susan seems to have no real notion of who she essentially is?

9. What expectations of marriage and family do the Rawlingses seem to have at thestart of their relationship? What are these ideas based on? Why does the marriageultimately fail?

10. To what extent is “To Room Nineteen” a story about one woman, one marriage? Towhat extent does it seem to be an allegory?

Critical Viewpoints/Reception History

The oldest person and only the eleventh woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature,Doris Lessing stands as an author of astonishing power, range, and accomplishment. In2007, when she was chosen to receive the honor at the age of 88, she was labeled “thatepicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power hassubjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny” in a press release announcing the award (seehttp://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/press.html).

Doris Lessing is part of both the history of literature and living literature. She hascontributed to changing the way we see the world. In all probability, no otherLaureate has accumulated such a volume of work. We stroll through the greatlibrary of her work, where all sections are unmarked and all genre classificationpointless. There is life and movement behind the broad or narrow spines of thebooks, resisting categorisation and the imposition of order.

So spoke the writer Per Wästberg in his presentation speech at the Nobel ceremony.“Lessing links to the great narrative tradition of the 19th century but equally we may useher works as textbooks in 20th-century behavioural patterns, not least to discover the waymany thought – or thought wrongly – during one of history's most turbulent periods aswar succeeded war, colonialism was unmasked and communism in Europe conquered,”he continued, applauding Lessing’s commitment to giving “voice to the silent and to therefugees and homeless of our century – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe” and“personif[ying] the woman’s role in the 20th century” (seehttp://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/presentation-speech.html). AsWästberg’s speech makes clear, the scope, the longevity of Lessing’s career alone isimpressive, but she has also been a remarkably productive and fearless writer, one whosework refuses easy categorization or labeling.

Lessing did not come to prominence in America until the publication of The GoldenNotebook, her 1962 novel of female anger and longing, a feminist classic and touchstone,but her earlier work had been well-reviewed by a number of critics. Writing aboutLessing's first novel published in Britain, The Grass Is Singing (1950), John Barkhamnoted “no impartial critic can fail to overlook the depth and maturity of this remarkablepsychological study” (“Tragedy on the Veld,” The New York Times Book Review [10September 1950]). Her first collection of short stories, This Was the Old Chief’s Country

(1950), also garnered positive notices; the volume “confirms her talent: if seriousness ofpurpose and exceptional literary ability determined commercial success, This Was theOld Chief's Country would be a bestseller for a long, long time,” remarked WilliamPeden (“Land of Violent Contrasts,” The New York Times Book Review [13 July 1952]).He went on to observe, “They are disturbing stories, these sensitively recorded testamentsto man's inhumanity to man. Permeated by a feeling of moral guilt, they are asmeaningful as the participation in an act of injustice or the recollection of pain,” anassessment echoed by many critics of Lessing’s work.

But it was The Golden Notebook that became a major, “a corruscating literary event”(Ernest Buckler, “Against the Terror, the Spirit of Sisyphus,” The New York Times BookReview [1 July 1962]). Marking a significant departure in Lessing’s work in scale, scope,focus, and the author’s disillusionment with the Communist Party, which she left in 1956,the novel represented a watershed moment in women’s literature. Though he deemed it“too long,” suggesting that “handl[ing] feelings at such length and at such bowstringpitch” would cause them “to go fetid,” Buckler ultimately concluded that Lessing wasable to point “such powerful significances [from the sensibilities of her heroine, AnnaWulf] that, in comparison, many other highly touted novels dealing with man’sacceptance—or defiance—of his fate seem picayune indeed” (“Against the Terror”).

The Golden Notebook is perhaps the finest example of what is generally seen as thesecond phase of Lessing’s career, the hallmark of her psychological investigations. (Thefirst phase is associated with Communism and more explicitly political engagement withapartheid and other social inequities and injustice.) Many critics see Lessing’s work atthis stage as her most accomplished, both in terms of style and political involvement.Reviewing Stories (1978), the collection of short stories that includes “To RoomNineteen,” Diane Johnson labeled Lessing “the great realist writer of our time, in thetradition of the major Continental novelists of the 19th century, particularly Stendhal andBalzac, but also Turgenev and Chekhov,” who “has few equals in understanding not onlydesire, but the rest—boredom, disappointment, erotic fury.” Lessing, Johnson concluded,

is the great novelist of the unspoken thing, of the part a husband and wife cannottell each other, of the mysteries that have no name and the little things people aresimply reluctant to talk about—disapproval, grudges, vague longings,disappointments, the promptings of the self in all its guises. She seems to knoweverything and to forgive it, or, in the overview, to see nothing to forgive. She hasbeen the most political and involved of all literary figures, a Marxist, socialist,outspoken foe of South African racial policies, women's lot and nearly all socialills. Yet, taken together, her work is suffused with a calm charity that reassures,heals and encourages. (“Equal to the World,” The New York Times Book Review[4 June 1978])

Still, Lessing herself has repeatedly distanced herself from the feminist label:

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because itcomes 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 thegolden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.’ Do they really wantpeople to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do.I’ve come with great regret to this conclusion. (Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessingon Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” The New York Times [25 July1982])

Though her stance has angered feminist critics, few would argue with Lessing’scommitment to complexity, her refusal to simplify. Lessing “is one of the very fewnovelists who have refused to believe that the world is too complicated to understand,”Margaret Drabble has said (see Gayle Greene, Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change[Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997]).

Lessing has, over the many years of her prolific career, embraced a number of styles andgenres. Her increasing interest in science fiction—“space fiction,” she has termed it—hasbeen, at least initially, seen as a movement away from the intensely political,steadfastedly realist writing that first made her reputation. But, as Lessing herself put it inan introduction to Shikasta, part of the Canopus in Argos: Archives series, her models are“the sacred literatures of the world” and science fiction, through which “the human mindis being forced to expand: this time starwards, galaxy-wise, and who knows where next.”Though many critics persist in their belief that Lessing’s later output has failed to live upto the promise and accomplishment of her earlier work, others have come to appreciatethe full scope of her writing, her incredible range, the total of her ability.

Her life story, too, has continued to be a source of fascination, an impressive collection ofexperiences, of influences to be traced back to the work. Lessing herself has written anumber of autobiographies, memoirs including Under My Skin: Volume One of MyAutobiography to 1949, published in 1994, and Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of MyAutobiography, 1949-1962, published in 1997. She has also written a book about herparents, Alfred and Emily (2008), a curious hybrid of fact and fiction, combining anovella that reinvents their lives, imagining them if they had never married, and a factualaccount of their actual marriage. Though some critics found the novella unconvincingand lacking, the power of the memoir was widely acknowledged. A number ofbiographers have also offered up a vision of Lessing’s life, tracing elements of her workback to her experiences. Of particular interest is Carole Klein’s Doris Lessing: ABiography (New York: Carol and Graf Publishers, 2000).

In a 2008 interview with Deborah Solomon (“A Literary Light: Questions for DorisLessing,” The New York Times Magazine [27 July 2008]), Lessing claims that, at 88, shehas “run out of energy completely” and is unlikely to write about the ideas that she hasnow. But, she continues, “You know, I have written quite a lot, so it is not really enoughto weep over.” Indeed, she is the author of more than 50 books, a Nobel Prize laureate, aprolific, prodigious writer who has observed and chronicled the twentieth century, whohas described our world and worlds imagined, who has, time and time and time again,proven herself an indispensable part of English letters.

Other Works of Interest

A number of interviews with Lessing—many conducted by other writers, including JoyceCarol Oates and Studs Terkel—are collected in Doris Lessing: Conversations, edited byEarl G. Ingersoll (New York: Ontario Review Press, 2000).

Useful guides to Lessing’s work include Elizabeth Maslen’s Doris Lessing (Kent:Northcote House Publishers, 1996), Mona Knapp’s Doris Lessing (New York: FrederickUngar, 1984), Claire Sprague and Virginia Tiger’s Critical Essays on Doris Lessing(New York: G.K. Hall, 1986), and Lorna Sage’s Doris Lessing (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1983).

Links

Doris Lessing: A Retrospective is a particularly useful resource for discussing Lessing’swork (http://www.dorislessing.org).

“Featured Author: Doris Lessing” makes available articles by and about Lessing, as wellas reviews of her work, which have appeared in The New York Times(http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/specials/lessing.html?scp=2&sq=doris%20lessing&st=cse).

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Yevgeniya Traps of Queen’sCollege, The City University of New York, for the preparation of the draft material.