Doris May Lessing, The Four-Gated City: Children of Violence Novel Sequence

Anne-Laure Brevet (University of Cambridge)

Ed. by Peter Childs, Birmingham Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1969

Places

United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Published seven years after

The Golden Notebook

The Four-Gated City

(1969) is the fifth, final and longest volume of the

Children of Violence

(1952-1969), a series of autobiographical novels including

Martha Quest

(1952),

A Proper Marriage

(1954),

A Ripple from the Storm

(1958), and

Landlocked

(1965), which relates the various stages of Lessing’s heroine Martha Quest’s life from adolescence onwards. Undeniably one of Doris Lessing’s major works, it was particularly praised by Horace Engdhal, the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in 2007, when Lessing received the Nobel Prize for Literature. This voluminous novel reveals a turning point in Lessing’s writing career. Its futuristic Appendix, staging Martha’s old age and death in a commune set on an island off the West…

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2756 words

Citation: Brevet, Anne-Laure. "The Four-Gated City: Children of Violence Novel Sequence". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=810, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Doris May Lessing, The Four-Gated City: Children of Violence Novel Sequence

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