A romantic socialist

There is no introduction to this collection of essays, reviews and ‘think-pieces’ by Doris Lessing, but they are presumably chosen by herself from the quantity of her literary criticism (the hardest work, or so they say) over a long political and literary lifetime. The pieces must have been difficult to assemble, for the acknowledgments in the back of the book include some very obscure sources alongside the blue-ribbon publications where you would expect to find ‘one of the most influential writers of the 20th century’. Some are from the Guardian, the New York Observer, the L. A. Times; more from The Spectator, the Literary Review and the late lamented Books and Bookmen; but others must have had to be dug out. There is an extract from a Cat Anthology from Salt Lake City and a Little Book of Advice for the Maynard School for Girls, Exeter.

She writes not only about the great.