Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women

Robert McGill (University of Toronto)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1971

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
- Bildungsroman
Story Collection

Resources

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First published in 1971,

Lives of Girls and Women

was Alice Munro's second book and achieved a greater popular success in Canada than her first, the short fiction collection

Dance of the Happy Shades

. Sometimes called a novel but perhaps better read as a short-story cycle,

Lives of Girls and Women

won the Canadian Booksellers' Award and is probably Munro's most well-known text. Its refusal to sentimentalize rurality and childhood is notable, while its frank, nuanced exploration of a girl's life and the social limitations imposed on it have been of great interest to feminist critics. Although both earlier and later texts by Munro feature a first-person narration about a woman growing up in a small town,

Lives

remains her most sustained and most influential example of such an approach.

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1987 words

Citation: McGill, Robert. "Lives of Girls and Women". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3893, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women

Dates

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Resources

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