Fay Weldon

2023 - 1 - 4

Post cover — Image courtesy of "The New York Times"

Fay Weldon, British Novelist Who Challenged Feminist Orthodoxy ... (The New York Times)

By turns elusive and confessional in public, she used dark satire to explore the divides between men and women.

She went on to find success as a television writer with the top-rated series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” about relationships between the ruling classes and their underlings — a recurring feature of British popular culture. But the couple divorced several years later, and she returned to England with her daughters, working as a housekeeper and a subway janitor before writing novels. [recalled](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/aug/31/bookerprize2003.awardsandprizes) in an interview with The Guardian in 2003 that he was about to announce Mr. But while she acquired a reputation as a “feminist of the old school,” as Emma Brockes “She looks in the mirror and sees that her hair is thin and her complexion dull,” Ms. She suggested in an interview with The Guardian in 2009 that the “Which is the age at which I stopped ‘Auto da Fay’: the age I stopped living and started writing instead, as a serious person.” (The final chapter of her autobiography suggests that she reached that watershed at 32, in 1963.) Her website précis did scant justice to a canon of writing perhaps best known for “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” (1983), a tangled parable of a woman wronged and the vengeance she exacts. “When she goes down to the village she is just another scurrying, aging woman, holding on to what is left of her life. Weldon’s early writing reflected an era that saw the rise of feminism in Britain, which provided the backdrop to much of her fiction. “She was a writer to the very end.” While she was too weak to hold a pen, she was still writing in her head, Mr.

Fay Weldon: The Life and Loves of a She-Devil author dies aged 91 (BBC News)

Weldon was born in the UK but was brought up in New Zealand. She published her first novel in 1967 and went on to be shortlisted for the Booker and Whitbread ...

As well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979, she was a judge in 1983 and delivered one of the most memorable speeches in Booker history. Weldon also won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award the same year for Wicked Women, a short story collection. [The Times critic Clare Clark recently praised it](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/praxis-by-fay-weldon-review-ml30gvp2k) as her best work, saying the author set herself the task of "disabusing women of just about every comforting myth they might cling to, firing off savage truths as though it is a novelist's duty to break three taboos before breakfast". We are saddened to hear that the brilliant Fay Weldon has died. She said she deliberately wrote about women who were often overlooked or not featured in the media. I didn't do that again with any other book, and I've since been considered rather frivolous in some circles." In 2017, she wrote Death of a She-Devil, a sequel to The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, in which Ruth is now 84 and has made a world with "women triumphant, men submissive". May she rest in peace." [Weldon revealed on her website](https://fayweldon.co.uk/) that she had suffered a stroke and broken a bone in her back, meaning she had been "hospitalised for much of the last year". [Joanne Harris said](https://twitter.com/Joannechocolat/status/1610666214828769281) she was "a remarkable woman", while TV presenter [Peter Purves said](https://twitter.com/purves_peter/status/1610665341708820480) she was a "fantastic writer whose work lit up the 70's and 80's". [pic.twitter.com/1nsp4qHlHv] [January 4, 2023] [View original tweet on Twitter](https://twitter.com/GeorginaCapel/status/1610662929673908227) [Author Jenny Colgan led the tributes,](https://twitter.com/jennycolgan/status/1610602505494302720) describing Weldon as "formidable, fierce and wonderful". A family statement released by her agent said: "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (CBE), author, essayist and playwright.

British novelist, screenwriter Fay Weldon dies at 91 (The Seattle Times)

British author Fay Weldon, known for novels including “The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil,” has died at 91.

She published her first novel, “The Fat Woman’s Joke,” in 1967. Born in England in September 1931, Weldon was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the U.K. “The sad truth is, my theory goes, that no-one is much interested in what happens to women after they turn 35. Weldon was a playwright, screenwriter and a prolific novelist, producing 30 novels as well as short stories and plays written for television, radio and the stage. Weldon’s books were often feminist, but she was also known for controversial comments about feminism later in life. Women who don’t have a terrible time are young, attractive, intelligent and don’t have children.”

Fay Weldon Dead: British Author Was 91 (Variety)

British author Fay Weldon, best known for 'The Life and Loves of a She-Devil' and 'The Cloning of Joanna May,' has died aged 91.

As well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979, she was a judge in 1983 and delivered one of the most memorable speeches in Booker history. Another popular Weldon adaptation was of science fiction novel “The Cloning of Joanna May” (1989) that was adapted as a series by Granada Television in 1992, starring Patricia Hodge and Brian Cox. “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (CBE), author, essayist and playwright.

Fay Weldon, author of 'Life and Loves of a She-Devil,' dies (Los Angeles Times)

Fay Weldon, a prolific novelist and one of the writers on the popular TV drama 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' has died at 91.

“As well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979, she was a judge in 1983 and delivered one of the most memorable speeches in Booker history. She published her first novel, “The Fat Woman’s Joke,” in 1967. “The sad truth is, my theory goes, that no-one is much interested in what happens to women after they turn 35. Born in England in September 1931, Weldon was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the U.K. Weldon was a playwright, screenwriter and prolific novelist, producing 30 novels as well as short stories and plays written for television, radio and the stage. Women who don’t have a terrible time are young, attractive, intelligent and don’t have children.”

Fay Weldon obituary (The Guardian)

Novelist and screenwriter whose tales of women taking control of their own destinies included The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.

On her website, she took a more pragmatic tack: “I buried the rest of the autobiography in three more novels, Mantrapped, She May Not Leave, and Kehua!, bringing the story up to this very year. [Death of a She-Devil](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/05/death-of-a-she-devil-by-fay-weldon-review), a sequel to her earlier bestseller, which saw an octogenarian she-devil trying to sort out her legacy in the tower once owned by her love rival. She concluded Auto da Fay by asserting that nothing interesting happened to her after she was 30, and that she simply spent the next 40 years scribbling. In 2006 she published a book of dos and don’ts for the older woman, What Makes Women Happy, which suggested that porn was not so bad. Fay remarried within a year and continued writing and making headlines from the home in Dorset that she shared with her third husband, Nick Fox, a poet and one-time bookseller, who became her manager. Her 1987 novel The Hearts and Lives of Men was first published in weekly instalments in Woman’s Own. When a stint running a tea shop (which she claimed was haunted) in Saffron Walden, Essex, with her mother and sister became too much, she launched a letter-writing campaign to potential London employees and landed a job as an agony aunt at the Daily Mirror. She only returns to herself after meeting the jazz musician and antiques dealer Ron Weldon, who in 1962 was to become her second husband. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil was televised with Patricia Hodge, Julie T Wallace and The first struck while Fay was still in the womb, forcing her young mother to flee the city of Napier and take refuge on a sheep farm, where she remained for three months without knowing whether her philandering husband was alive or dead. After one last try to make a go of the marriage in New Zealand, Margaret left for lodgings in a hotel in Christchurch, and began to earn her own living, writing romantic novels under the pen name Pearl Bellairs, borrowed from Aldous Huxley’s novel Crome Yellow. A polemicist whose opinions shaped themselves around the plot of her latest book, a pragmatist who giggled her way through every sentence, she was mischievous and evasive, yet wilfully and wittily life-affirming.

Fay Weldon Dies: 'The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil' Author Was 91 (Deadline)

“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (CBE), author, essayist, and playwright,” the statement read. “She died peacefully this ...

In 2001, Weldon was made CBE for her services to literature in the New Year Honours list. The novel is Weldon’s most celebrated and follows a married woman who goes to extreme lengths to take revenge on her husband and his attractive lover. Weldon’s prolific body of work also includes several short stories, plays, and works for television, theater, and cinema.

Writer Fay Weldon dies aged 91 (The Guardian)

Author of novels including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil wrote more than 30 books as well as TV drama.

[suggesting once that only 60% of what she told journalists was true](https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/aug/22/fay-weldon-interview-saturday). [Auto da Fay](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/18/biography.fayweldon), Weldon described how Bateman wasn’t interested in sex and encouraged her to work as a hostess in a Soho nightclub. With four more novels appearing over the following decade, as well as a series of plays for stage and screen, there was little chance that a voice as caustic and energetic as Weldon’s would be forgotten. Her sixth novel, Praxis, tells the story of a woman who plays a succession of roles – drudge, prostitute, wife, mother, copywriter and feminist leader – and finds herself committing adultery, incest and infanticide. Weldon’s best-known novel, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, was published five years later, in 1983. Weldon charted lives shaped by class and the sexual revolution in more than 30 novels including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Splitting and the Booker prize-shortlisted Praxis.

British novelist, screenwriter Fay Weldon dies at 91 (mySanAntonio.com)

LONDON (AP) — British author Fay Weldon, known for novels including “The Life And...

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Kate Mosse: Fay Weldon was one of the great writers of the late 20th ... (Chard & Ilminster News)

The Labyrinth author added Weldon had a 'radical message for women' to 'have fun'.

The 61-year-old, who is the founder of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, added: “She was funny, she was mischievous, she was witty. The Labyrinth author added Weldon, who wrote The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil and Praxis, had a “radical message for women” to “have fun and be yourself”. Kate Mosse said Fay Weldon was “one of the great writers of the late 20th century” as she paid tribute to the late author who died at the age of 91.

Fay Weldon: 'It seems important that you should risk not being liked' (Financial Times)

The writer, who has died aged 91, was exhilaratingly defiant to the end. Susie Boyt reflects on the life and work of a remarkable figure who gave women a ...

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British novelist Fay Weldon dies; her 'She-Devil' book was turned ... (Pacifica Tribune)

In addition to penning 30 novels, the British author also was a playwright and a writer on the popular 1970s TV series "Upstairs, Downstairs."

Born in England in September 1931, Weldon was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the U.K. “The sad truth is, my theory goes, that no-one is much interested in what happens to women after they turn 35. Weldon’s books were often feminist, but she was also known for controversial comments about feminism later in life. Weldon was a playwright, screenwriter and a prolific novelist, producing 30 novels as well as short stories and plays written for television, radio and the stage. It was adapted into a TV series as well as a film starring Meryl Streep. Women who don’t have a terrible time are young, attractive, intelligent and don’t have children.”

Fay Weldon, acerbic British novelist and screenwriter, dies at 91 (The Washington Post)

Her novels included “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil,” which was adapted into a Hollywood movie. She also wrote for the drama series “Upstairs, ...

Weldon was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001 for services to literature, shortly after she gained notoriety in the literary world for her novel “The Bulgari Connection.” The book was sponsored by the jewelry company Bulgari, which paid for Ms. Weldon continued to write, publishing books including “Chalcot Crescent” (2009), a dystopian novel about the future of capitalism, and “Death of a She Devil” (2017), the sequel to her earlier hit. “My sentences are too short, and if you want to win prizes, and be taken seriously as a literary writer, you have to take out all the jokes,” she later told the Guardian. Weldon’s husband left her for his “astrological therapist.” He died in 1994, the day his divorce to Ms. Weldon was vaulted to greater fame with her novel “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” (1983), about a lantern-jawed woman named Ruth who, driven by envy and a desire for revenge, undergoes plastic surgery to look like her husband’s lover. [a radio interviewer in 1998](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/122813.stm) that rape “isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a woman,” arguing that society “glamorizes” sexual assault by viewing it as especially horrific. Her mother, the former Margaret Jepson, was herself a novelist and the daughter of another author, Edgar Jepson, whose literary acquaintances included T.S. Her novel “Praxis” (1978), about the shifting mind-set of a woman with a rickety childhood, two unsuccessful marriages, a career as a prostitute and an incestuous relationship, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award. The book was adapted into a prizewinning BBC miniseries and a much-maligned Hollywood movie, “She-Devil” (1989), starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr. Much of it was also semi-autobiographical — inspired, she said, by her “mildly scandalous” early life, which included a nomadic upbringing in New Zealand and England, single motherhood at age 22, and a marriage to a high school headmaster who, according to Ms. Weldon “had a number of strokes,” he said in an email, but was still working until her death, “writing poems in her head and dictating slowly.” Fay Weldon, a mischievous and prolific British author who explored women’s lives and relationships in novels such as “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil,” challenging assumptions about gender, love and domesticity while acquiring a reputation as both a feminist and an anti-feminist, died Jan.

British novelist Fay Weldon dies; her 'She-Devil' book was turned ... (Pacifica Tribune)

In addition to penning 30 novels, the British author also was a playwright and a writer on the popular 1970s TV series "Upstairs, Downstairs."

Fay Weldon

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