Doris and Co.

When I heard of the death, at 94, of Doris Lessing I had to jettison my planned blip to mark the passing of such a great literary, political and feminist icon.

Here is my copy of her uniquely ground-breaking novel The Golden Notebook written in 1962 and covering the whole panoply of sexual and revolutionary politics from an intensely personal standpoint: it was the life she lived as a young single mother in London who had left her home and husband to pursue a literary career and to plunge into a profoundly unconventional, independent existence.

Doris Lessing loved and respected cats and on the left is book she wrote about those she had known, Particularly Cats. Some photos of her wih her cats can be found here.

I never had the privilege of  seeing Doris Lessing in person (although I greatly admired her caustic remarks as recorded when waylaid by journalists telling her she had won the Nobel prize for literature in 2007). I did however get to  know, in her later years, Doris Lessing's friend Joan Rodker, upon whom the major character of Molly in The Golden Notebook was based. As young women they had shared a house for a period in the 60s and Joan always hinted that she knew a great deal of interesting stuff about Doris - but she never let on and died in 2010 aged 95 without writing an account of her own exceptional life. (Obituaries can be found online.)

Both women lived long and strong as independent,  pioneering women and I salute the two of them.