Lessing Under My Skin

Doris May Lessing: Under My Skin: My Autobiography, to 1949 (Under My Skin) New York HarperCollins Publishers 1994 ; fester Einband / hard cover; Schutzumschlag / dust cover; sig.; 1. Ed. ISBN: 0060171642
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Fine in publisher's slipcase. One of 150 numbered copies signed by Lessing. Signed by Author First Edition Fine slipcase Hardcover; First Edition

[SW: LESSING DORIS MAY 1919 AUTHORS]

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Lessing, Doris May. Under My Skin: My Autobiography to 1949.
Hardcover. Hardcover with dustjacket 2nd printing 1994 HarperCollins. Superclean; no marks; pages bright; binding tight; price intact. Only a hint of shelfwear. Gift-giving condition. 419pp, B/W photos. Language: English. Her childhood in Africa up to her arrival in London with 1st novel. NOTE: Cannot ship outside U.S. via Global Priority--Surface or Airmail only. From the publisher: 'The experiences absorbed through these skins too few are evoked in this memoir of Doris Lessing's childhood and youth as the daughter of a British colonial family in Persia and Southern Rhodesia. Honestly and with overwhelming immediacy, Lessing maps the growth of her consciousness, her sexuality, and her politics, offering a rare opportunity to get under her skin and discover the forces that made her one of the most distinguished writers of our time.'.

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Lessing, Doris May: Love, Again, Harpercollins April 1996 ISBN: 0060176873
,,EX LIB\n"The country of love... a desert of deprivation... longing and jealousy" is the focus of Lessing's newest novel . She charts her heroine's emotional landscape with assiduous attention to the most minute nuances. Sarah Durham was widowed young; now in her mid-60s, she is manager of and playwright for a London fringe theater group. A production of a play based on the journals and music of a 19th-century quadroon from Martinique, Julie Vairon, inflames Sarah's dormant sexual impulses. And she is not the only one: all of the actors, the director and a rich patron, Stephen Ellington-Smith, are also sublimely seduced by Julie's words, music and the few portraits of her that survive. In this highly charged atmosphere, suggestive of the magical transformations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sarah craves an actor half her age (who leads her on, but beds others); Stephen, whose marriage is tragically unhappy, becomes unhealthily obsessed with the dead Julia; Sarah and the director then acknowledge their sexual longing for each other and on and on it goes, in a quadrille of lovesick changing partners. Lessing's perceptive insights into the condition of being female and elderly and emotionally excluded ("on the other shore, watching") are as astute as anything she has ever written, and so are her comments on contemporary English society and on human nature in general. Although the book is long and rambling, asking much of a reader's patience and willingness to spend so much time inside Sarah's head, Lessing, whose memoir, Under My Skin, appeared last year, wields a formidable analytic intelligence that makes this work provocative and often astonishingly beautiful.

Condition;Very Good / Very Good ,Hardcover ,EX LIB\n"The country of love... a desert of deprivation... longing and jealousy" is the focus of Lessing's newest novel . She charts her heroine's emotional landscape with assiduous attention to the most minute nuances. Sarah Durham was widowed young; now in her mid-60s, she is manager of and playwright for a London fringe theater group. A production of a play based on the journals and music of a 19th-century quadroon from Martinique, Julie Vairon, inflames Sarah's dormant sexual impulses. And she is not the only one: all of the actors, the director and a rich patron, Stephen Ellington-Smith, are also sublimely seduced by Julie's words, music and the few portraits of her that survive. In this highly charged atmosphere, suggestive of the magical transformations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sarah craves an actor half her age (who leads her on, but beds others); Stephen, whose marriage is tragically unhappy, becomes unhealthily obsessed with the dead Julia; Sarah and the director then acknowledge their sexual longing for each other and on and on it goes, in a quadrille of lovesick changing partners. Lessing's perceptive insights into the condition of being female and elderly and emotionally excluded ("on the other shore, watching") are as astute as anything she has ever written, and so are her comments on contemporary English society and on human nature in general. Although the book is long and rambling, asking much of a reader's patience and willingness to spend so much time inside Sarah's head, Lessing, whose memoir, Under My Skin, appeared last year, wields a formidable analytic intelligence that makes this work provocative and often astonishingly beautiful.

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Dorris Lessing: Under My Skin. Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949, London England HarperCollins 1994

Boards Fine/Very Good/fine 2nd Impression 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 000255545X Hardback There can be few modern autobiographies so revealing of the mind of their creator. This book shows a woman uncompromising, from the beginning, in every respect, who break all the rules, who battles at every turn against her upbringing and enviornment, who looks on the world clear and hard; and yet also displays a softness, a wonderful sense of humour, a compassion for human failure. This book shows - amongst many other things - how completely the life and work of one of the great writers of the twentieth century are of a single and indestructible piece. Illustrated. Price clipped.

[SW: Autobiography's -Biography sociology -and Travel Non-Fiction/Autobiography/Writer/Author/DorisLessing]

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