Doris Lessing

Doris May Lessing CH OMG née Tayler 22 October 1919 17 November 2013 was a British novelist She was born to British parents in Iran 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 19521969 The Golden Notebook 1962 The Good Terrorist 1985 and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos Archives 19791983 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 Lessing was the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature at age 87 In 2001 Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetimes achievement in British literature In 2008 The Times ranked her fifth on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945 Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah Iran on 22 October 1919 to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler née McVeagh both British subjects 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 The couple moved to Iran for Alfred to take a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia In 1925 the family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe to farm maize and other crops on about 1000 acres 400 ha 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 As a girl Doris was educated first at the Dominican Convent High School a Roman Catholic convent allgirls school in the Southern Rhodesian capital of Salisbury now Harare Then followed a year at Girls High School in Salisbury She left school at age 13 and was selfeducated 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 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 19401992 and Jean born in 1941 before the marriage ended in 1943 Lessing left the family home in 1943 leaving the two children with their father After the divorce Doriss interest was drawn to the community around the Left Book Club an organisation she had joined the year before 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 19462013 before they divorced in 1949 She did not marry again 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 Source Article Doris Lessing from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30