Nobel Prize in Literature 2007: Doris Lessing and the Female Experience

This note covers the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007: who won it, what the Swedish Academy's citation for Doris Lessing meant, the life and historical background behind her writing, her major novels and their themes, how her writing developed over nearly six decades, why the prize still matters, and quick facts for exams.

What was the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 awarded for?

The Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 to Doris Lessing with the citation: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

In plain words, the Academy called Lessing a writer of epic scope about women's lives. "Epicist" means someone who writes on a grand, sweeping scale, the way an epic poem covers a whole world rather than one small corner of it.

The citation says Lessing wrote about women's lives across decades and continents, doing so with scepticism (she questioned easy answers and ideologies), fire (passionate, direct writing) and visionary power (an ability to imagine future and alternative worlds).

The phrase "a divided civilisation" points to the racial, political and gender divisions she examined, from colonial Africa to twentieth-century Europe.

The prize is formally called the Nobel Prize in Literature, and it is decided and announced by the Swedish Academy, a body based in Stockholm. The 2007 award was announced on 11 October 2007, and Lessing received the whole prize, a share of 1/1, worth ten million Swedish kronor.

Who is the laureate?

Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing was born on 22 October 1919 in Kermanshah, in what was then Persia and is now Iran, to British parents. At the time of the award she was resident in the United Kingdom.

She received the full prize, a share of 1/1, for her entire body of work rather than a single book. She died on 17 November 2013 in London.

Her father, Alfred Cook Taylor, had been a captain in the British army in the First World War and later worked as a bank official; her mother, Emily Maude Taylor, had trained as a nurse.

Lessing's contribution, as the Academy's citation makes clear, was a lifetime of fiction that studied women's inner and outer lives with scepticism, intensity and an imaginative reach that stretched from realistic African farms to distant planets.

Her body of work runs to around 50 books across many genres, including the novel sequences Children of Violence and Canopus in Argos, the landmark novel The Golden Notebook, and two volumes of autobiography.

What shaped Doris Lessing's early life?

In 1925, when Lessing was five, her family moved from Persia to a farm in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), hoping to improve their income.

This move placed her childhood inside a colonial society built on racial division between white settlers and black Africans, a setting she later wrote about repeatedly. She recalled this early life on the farm in Under My Skin, the first part of her autobiography.

She attended a convent boarding school from age seven and later a girls' school in Salisbury, but ended her formal education at just 14 years old, after which she moved away from home.

After leaving school, she worked in a string of ordinary jobs, as a nursemaid, telephonist, office worker, stenographer and journalist, while publishing short stories on the side.

Her personal life was eventful: she married Frank Charles Wisdom in 1939, had two children with him, a son named John and a daughter named Jean, and divorced in 1943.

In 1945 she married Gottfried Lessing, a German-Jewish immigrant she met through a Marxist group concerned with race issues; they had a son, Peter, and divorced in 1949.

Lessing was politically engaged throughout these years. She was active in the Southern Rhodesian Labour Party and, between 1952 and 1956, was a member of the British Communist Party, also campaigning against nuclear weapons.

Her criticism of the South African regime led to her being barred from entering South Africa between 1956 and 1995, and she was similarly banned from Southern Rhodesia after a 1956 visit. She later described returning to the country of her childhood, in 1982, in African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe.

In 1949 she moved to London, taking her younger son Peter with her, and began establishing herself as a writer, a city that remained her home for the rest of her life.

What are Doris Lessing's major works?

Lessing's writing moved across realism, political fiction, psychological drama and science fiction, but several works stand out as landmarks across her long career.

What themes and style define her writing?

A consistent thread across Lessing's fiction is her attention to women's inner lives: their desires, frustrations and search for independence within societies built by and for men.

The Golden Notebook, for instance, divided its main character Anna Wulf's thoughts into five separate notebooks, covering Africa and politics, the communist party, relationships with men and sex, and Jungian dream analysis, because no single notebook could hold the whole of her experience.

Lessing was also drawn to political disillusionment. Having been a committed communist in her youth, her later fiction repeatedly examined how utopian ideologies can trap and deceive believers.

The Nobel Committee's chairman, Per Wästberg, described her in his presentation speech as a "cartographer of disillusionment" who drew dystopias with frightening clarity, having revealed what he called "totalitarian temptations" alongside the strength of "undogmatic humanism".

A third strand is her turn towards speculative and visionary fiction. The Canopus in Argos series imagined human civilisation observed from another solar system, while Mara and Dann pictured the world after an Ice Age, drawing on her long interest in Sufism, which she discovered in the 1960s through the teacher Idries Shah and brought into the Canopus series.

This did not replace her realism; it ran alongside it, since Lessing moved freely between grounded social observation, as in The Grass Is Singing, and vast imaginative canvases set far beyond everyday life. The presentation speech described her overall range as moving "from honest realism to symbolic fable, from the psychology of self-realisation to saga and myth".

Across all these modes, her style favoured mixing forms such as press cuttings, news reports, film, dreamwork and diary entries inside a single narrative, reflecting a mind unwilling to settle for one fixed point of view. Wästberg captured this restless quality by saying she wrote "as she breathes", approaching the trials of existence without protective distance.

How did Doris Lessing's writing develop?

This timeline shows a writer who never settled into one genre. She began in the realist tradition of colonial Africa, moved through intense political and feminist fiction in the 1960s, experimented with science fiction in the 1970s and 1980s, then returned in later decades to memoir and realism, all while continuing to publish new fiction into her eighties.

Why does this prize matter?

The Academy's citation and the presentation speech together point to Lessing's lasting influence on how readers understood women's experience in the twentieth century.

Per Wästberg said The Golden Notebook "became an epiphany for an entire generation of women" when it appeared in 1962, showing how the novel shaped the feminist movement that followed.

Her range also matters: few other laureates moved so freely between realistic social fiction, political satire and speculative science fiction while still being read seriously in all three modes, resisting what Wästberg called "categorisation and the imposition of order".

Her early warnings, in the presentation speech's words, about "global environmental threats and poverty and corruption in the Third World" show a writer attentive to issues that became more widely discussed only later.

Lessing's life itself, as a woman who left formal schooling at 14, lived through colonial Africa, communism, feminism and old age, gave her fiction a breadth that the Academy recognised as covering "a divided civilisation" rather than one narrow slice of it.

Wästberg also stressed her refusal to simplify, noting that although she "resembles a continent that initially defies exploration", she never accepted that the world was too complicated to examine honestly, approaching difficult subjects, in his words, by grasping "our reality like a grubby root vegetable".

Her work remains read both as literature and as a record of how people lived and thought through major twentieth-century upheavals, across roughly 58 years of publishing that Wästberg described as having "warmed, provoked and led hand-in-hand" generations of readers.

What did the Nobel Committee say about Lessing's life's work?

Per Wästberg, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature, used his presentation speech to set Lessing's writing against the backdrop of twentieth-century history.

He said she had "contributed to changing the way we see the world" and suggested that, in all probability, no other laureate had produced such a large volume of work, around 50 books spanning many genres.

He linked her to the great nineteenth-century narrative tradition while also treating her novels as records of twentieth-century behaviour, written through "one of history's most turbulent periods as war succeeded war, colonialism was unmasked and communism in Europe conquered".

Wästberg praised her "almost limitless empathy with odd lives and a freedom from prejudice regarding every form of human behaviour", and noted that she had given voice to "the silent and to the refugees and homeless of our century, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe".

He traced her development through specific books: Children of Violence, where Martha Quest moves from colonial Africa into the British class hierarchy; The Golden Notebook, where "battle is joined between the will to create and the desire to love"; and later works such as The Summer Before the Dark, The Fifth Child and The Good Terrorist, where she strips her characters of their illusions.

He also pointed to her 2007 novel, The Cleft, as a parable "from the dawn of mankind – before the invention of love", and closed by telling Lessing that her lifework was "crowned with a prize you have long deserved".

These remarks, attributed directly to the Swedish Academy's committee chairman, explain in the Academy's own terms why a writer working across realism, autobiography and science fiction was judged to deserve a single, unified prize.

Quick facts for exams

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 was awarded to the English writer Doris Lessing, announced by the Swedish Academy on 11 October 2007.

She received the whole prize, worth ten million Swedish kronor, for her citation describing her as an "epicist of the female experience" who examined "a divided civilisation" with scepticism, fire and visionary power.

Born in 1919 in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran), Lessing grew up in colonial Southern Rhodesia and settled in London in 1949. Her best-known works include The Grass Is Singing, the Children of Violence series and The Golden Notebook. She died in London in 2013.

Note: Source. The prize facts in this note are from the Nobel Prize's official site, nobelprize.org.

Glossary

• Epicist — a writer whose work covers a grand, sweeping scale of time, place or experience, like an epic.
• Citation — the official sentence a Nobel prize committee writes to explain why a laureate was chosen.
• Bildungsroman — a novel that follows a character's moral and psychological growth from youth to maturity.
• Dystopia — an imagined society or future that is deeply flawed, unjust or frightening.
• Colonialism — a system in which one country rules and economically controls another territory and its people.
• Southern Rhodesia — the former British colonial name for the country now called Zimbabwe.
• Science fiction — fiction based on imagined future science, technology or alternative civilisations.
• Autobiography — a book in which a person writes the story of their own life.
• Disillusionment — the loss of belief in an idea or ideology once trusted or admired.
• The Swedish Academy — the body responsible for choosing and announcing the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Prize share — the fraction of a Nobel prize's money and honour given to each laureate when more than one shares it.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Doris Lessing wrote mainly realistic novels. Correct: her work spans realism, political fiction, psychological thrillers and science fiction, including the five-volume Canopus in Argos series.
• Misconception: Lessing was born in England. Correct: she was born in Kermanshah, Persia, now Iran, to British parents, and grew up in Southern Rhodesia.
• Misconception: The Golden Notebook was her first novel. Correct: her debut novel was The Grass Is Singing in 1950; The Golden Notebook, from 1962, was her breakthrough.
• Misconception: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 was shared between two writers. Correct: Lessing received the whole prize, a share of 1/1.
• Misconception: Lessing was always a supporter of communism. Correct: she was a Communist Party member from 1952 to 1956 but later wrote fiction criticising totalitarian temptations and ideological disillusionment.
• Misconception: Children of Violence and Canopus in Argos are the same series. Correct: Children of Violence is a five-novel realist sequence about Martha Quest, while Canopus in Argos is a separate five-volume science-fiction series.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. In which year was Doris Lessing awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature? [1 mark]

1. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, announced by the Swedish Academy on 11 October 2007.

Q2. Name Doris Lessing's debut novel and briefly state its subject. [2 marks]

1. Her debut novel was The Grass Is Singing, published in 1950, which examines the relationship between a white farmer's wife and her black servant as a study of racial conflict.

Q3. Quote the official citation for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature and explain its meaning. [4 marks]

1. The citation reads: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
2. "Epicist" means a writer who covers experience on a grand, sweeping scale, not just one small setting.
3. "Female experience" points to her lifelong focus on women's inner lives, desires and struggles for independence.
4. "Scepticism, fire and visionary power" describes her questioning of ideologies, her passionate directness, and her imaginative reach into speculative and future worlds, while "a divided civilisation" refers to the racial, political and gender divisions she examined.

Q4. Describe the early life events that shaped Doris Lessing's fiction. [4 marks]

1. Lessing was born in 1919 in Kermanshah, Persia, now Iran, to British parents.
2. In 1925 her family moved to a farm in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, placing her inside a colonial society divided by race.
3. She left formal schooling at 14 and worked as a nursemaid, telephonist and journalist before publishing short stories.
4. She was active in left-wing politics, including membership of the British Communist Party from 1952 to 1956, and moved to London in 1949, all of which fed directly into the political and colonial themes of her novels.

Q5. Explain why The Golden Notebook is considered Doris Lessing's breakthrough novel. [3 marks]

1. Published in 1962, it used a complex structure of five separate notebooks kept by the main character, Anna Wulf.
2. These notebooks covered her thoughts on Africa and politics, the communist party, her relationships with men, and dream interpretation, showing how political and emotional conflicts intertwine.
3. The novel was embraced by the emerging feminist movement and became, in the words of the presentation speech, "an epiphany for an entire generation of women".

Q6. Discuss the range of genres across which Doris Lessing wrote, with examples. [6 marks]

1. Lessing's roughly 50 books span realism, political fiction, psychological thrillers, autobiography and science fiction.
2. Her realist strand began with The Grass Is Singing in 1950, a tragic study of racial conflict on a colonial farm, and continued through the five-novel Children of Violence sequence tracing Martha Quest's awakening.
3. Her most experimental realist novel, The Golden Notebook of 1962, mixed documentary forms such as diaries and news items within a single narrative.
4. In the 1970s she turned to what she called "inner-space fiction" in Briefing for a Descent into Hell, exploring the mind beyond reason, inspired by R. D. Laing.
5. Between 1979 and 1984 she expanded into science fiction with the five-volume Canopus in Argos: Archives, studying human development after an atomic war.
6. She later returned to realism with The Good Terrorist and to memoir with Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade, showing a career that never settled permanently into one mode of writing.

Q7. What reasons did the Nobel Committee chairman give, in the presentation speech, for honouring Lessing's work? [5 marks]

1. Per Wästberg, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said Lessing had contributed to changing how people see the world and had produced an unusually large volume of work.
2. He said she revealed "totalitarian temptations" and showed "the strength of undogmatic humanism", drawing on her own disillusionment with communism.
3. He praised her empathy for unusual lives and her freedom from prejudice about human behaviour.
4. He noted she was early to flag "global environmental threats and poverty and corruption in the Third World".
5. He called her a "cartographer of disillusionment" for her dystopias, and credited her with giving voice to refugees and the homeless, and with personifying the woman's role in the twentieth century, concluding that her lifework was "crowned with a prize you have long deserved".

Key takeaways

• Doris Lessing won the whole Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 for her epic treatment of female experience across a divided civilisation.
• She was born in Persia in 1919, grew up in colonial Southern Rhodesia, and settled in London in 1949.
• Her debut novel, The Grass Is Singing, examined racial conflict on a colonial farm.
• The Golden Notebook, from 1962, became a landmark text for the feminist movement.
• Her Canopus in Argos series, written between 1979 and 1984, moved her fiction into science fiction.
• Lessing's left-wing political past fed directly into her later fiction about ideological disillusionment.
• Her two-volume autobiography, Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade, recalled her own life alongside Britain's imperial decline.
• She continued publishing new fiction, including The Cleft, in the same year she won the prize.

Test yourself

Where and when was Doris Lessing born?

Doris Lessing was born on 22 October 1919 in Kermanshah, Persia, now called Iran.

What was Lessing's share of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature?

She received the whole prize, a share of 1/1, since she was the only laureate that year.

Which novel is described as Doris Lessing's real breakthrough?

The Golden Notebook, published in 1962, is described as her real breakthrough and became important for the feminist movement.

What colonial territory did Lessing's family move to in 1925?

Her family moved to a farm in Southern Rhodesia, which is now called Zimbabwe.

Name one science-fiction work by Doris Lessing.

Canopus in Argos: Archives is a five-volume science-fiction series she wrote between 1979 and 1984.

At what age did Lessing end her formal schooling?

She independently ended her formal schooling at the age of 14.

Which body awards the Nobel Prize in Literature?

The Swedish Academy decides and announces the Nobel Prize in Literature each year.