Doris Lessing






Doris Lessing

author profile


born
October 22, 1919

place of birth
Kermanshah, Iran, Islamic Republic of

website

genre
Literature & Fiction

influences
Idries Shah, Olive Schreiner, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Dostoevsky, the Brontë sisters, Christina Stead, DH Lawrence, Stendhal, Virginia Woolf, Mikhail Bulgakov, Olaf Stapledon


about this author

Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family...more




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avg rating: 3.66 | 8,072 ratings | 1,253 reviews | 147 distinct works | 39 fans
The Golden Notebook The Golden Notebook
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.68 — 1,653 ratings — published 1962
36 editions
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The Fifth Child The Fifth Child
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.56 — 937 ratings — published 1985
34 editions
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The Grass Is Singing The Grass Is Singing
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.77 — 544 ratings — published 1950
34 editions
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The Good Terrorist The Good Terrorist
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.70 — 267 ratings — published 1985
16 editions
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Martha Quest: A Novel Martha Quest: A Novel
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.78 — 251 ratings — published 1952
15 editions
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Memoirs of a Survivor Memoirs of a Survivor
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.72 — 250 ratings — published 1974
15 editions
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The Cleft The Cleft
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 2.73 — 302 ratings — published 2007
9 editions
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Briefing for a Descent into He... Briefing for a Descent into Hell
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.77 — 199 ratings — published 1971
12 editions
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Mara and Dann: An Adventure Mara and Dann: An Adventure
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.72 — 193 ratings — published 1998
11 editions
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Shikasta: Canopus in Argos Arc... Shikasta: Canopus in Argos Archvies re Colonised Planet 5-Personal Psychological Historical Document Relating to Visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary Grade 9 87th of the Period of the Last Days
by Doris Lessing
avg rating 3.72 — 173 ratings — published 1979
14 editions
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"Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.' "
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
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"Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself."
Doris Lessing
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"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."
Doris Lessing
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