12 followers

Fay Weldon

(1931 - 2023)

After hard times and odd jobs as a lone parent, Fay Weldon became one of the top advertising copywriters of her generation. She moved to TV drama (writing the pilot episode of the iconic series Upstairs Downstairs) then turned to novels – including the classic The Life and Loves of a She Devil and The Cloning of Joanna May. She was made a CBE for services to literature and was a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Genres: Historical, General Fiction

Series

She Devil
1. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983)
2. Death of a She Devil (2017)

Love & Inheritance
   1. Habits of the House (2012)
   2. Long Live the King (2013)
   3. The New Countess (2013)

Spoils of War
1. Before the War (2016)
2. After the Peace (2018)

Novels

   The Fat Woman's Joke (1968)
     aka ... And the Wife Ran Away
   Down Among the Women (1971)
   Female Friends (1974)
   Little Sisters (1974)
     aka Words of Advice
   Remember Me (1976)
   Praxis (1978)
   Puffball (1980)
   The President's Child (1982)
   The Heart of the Country (1986)
   The Shrapnel Academy (1986)
   The Hearts and Lives of Men (1987)
   Leader of the Band (1988)
   The Cloning of Joanna May (1989)
   Darcy's Utopia (1990)
   Growing Rich (1992)
   Life Force (1992)
   Question of Timing (1992)
   Affliction (1993)
     aka Trouble
   Splitting (1995)
   Worst Fears (1996)
   Big Women (1997)
     aka Big Girls Don't Cry
   Rhode Island Blues (2000)
   The Bulgari Connection (2001)
   Mantrapped (2004)
   She May Not Leave (2005)
   The Spa Decameron (2007)
     aka The Spa
   The Stepmother's Diary (2008)
   Chalcot Crescent (2009)
   Kehua! (2010)

Omnibus

   The Collected Novels Volume One (2018)
   The Collected Novels Volume Two (2018)
   The Collected Novels Volume Three (2018)

Collections

   Watching Me, Watching You (1981)
   Polaris (1985)
   Moon Over Minneapolis (1991)
   Angel, All Innocence (1995)
   Wicked Women (1995)
   A Hard Time to Be a Father (1998)
   Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide (2002)
   Poolside (2007) (with Alice Adams, Amy Bloom, John Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, A M Homes, Andrea Lee, Joyce Carol Oates, Edna O'Brien, Julie Orringer, James Purdy, Graham Swift, John Updike and David Foster Wallace)
   Great Escapes (2008) (with Amanda Craig, Virginia Ironside, Kathy Lette, Deborah Moggach, Kate Mosse, Lesley Pearse, Rose Tremain, Jane Elizabeth Varley and Isabel Wolff)
   Mischief (2015)

Chapbooks

   The Rules of Life (1987)
   Wolf the Mechanical Dog (1988)
   The Roots of Violence (1989)
   Party Puddle (1989)

Novellas

The Ted Dreams (2014)

Non fiction

   Letters to Alice (1984)
   Rebecca West (1985)
   Sacred Cows (1989)
   Godless in Eden (1999)
   Auto Da Fay (2002)
   What Makes Women Happy (2006)
   Why Will No-One Publish My Novel? (2018)

Anthologies containing stories by Fay Weldon

The 4th Bumper Book of Ghost Stories (1980)
The Literary Ghost (1991)
The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women (1995)
The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (1996)
Mistresses of the Dark (1998)
The Mammoth Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (1998)
Crossing the Border (1998)
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2000)

Short stories

	Angel, All Innocence [short story] (1977)
	Spirit of the House (1980)
	Watching Me, Watching You [short story] (1981)
	Down the Clinical Disco (1985)
	A Good Sound Marriage (1991)

Awards

	Booker Prize Best Novel nominee (1979) : Praxis
	Whitbread Prize Best Novel nominee (1996) : Worst Fears

Fay Weldon recommends

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
(Bladerunner, book 1)
Philip K Dick
"My literary hero."

The Survivors (1982)
Elaine Feinstein
"Elaine Feinstein writes with the grace of a born poet and the energy of a natural novelist."

Borderline (1985)
Janette Turner Hospital
"Janette Turner Hospital goes from strength to strength."

Tongues of Flame (1985)
Tim Parks
"Religion, sex and mania bursting hoof-footed from surburban doors."

Egalia's Daughters (1986)
Gerd Brantenberg
"Returns the reader to spot on feminist zeal."

Serenissima (1987)
Erica Jong
"A stirring book of fable and fantasy... outrageously readable."

Witchbroom (1992)
Lawrence Scott
"A powerful writer."

Casting Off (1995)
Libby Purves
"Ms Purves has the gift of tongues - a born novelist."

Justine (1997)
Alice Thompson
"A lot of flagellation and a matching literary-exquisite style."

Bubbles Unbound (2001)
(Bubbles Yablonsky, book 1)
Sarah Strohmeyer
"A wonderfully energising and skilful page-turner of a book."

The Memory Stones (2003)
Kate O'Riordan
"She has the capacity to tell it how it is, not how we think it ought to be, and to tell it passionately."

Peyton Amberg (2003)
Tama Janowitz
"It is one of the funniest books I have read, and the bleakest... raw, rude, upsetting and immensely invigorating."

Mobius Dick (2004)
Andrew Crumey
"I loved it!"

The Glorious Flight of Perdita Tree (2005)
Olivia Fane
"This book is a delight... I loved it."

The Jigsaw Maker (2006)
Adrienne Dines
"The pieces fit together very well indeed."

The Pink Hotel (2011)
Anna Stothard
"She breathes new life into old literature."

Love, Sex & the Wrong Bride (2011)
Katia Lief
"Wonderfully funny and terribly true."

The Marlowe Papers (2012)
Ros Barber
"Terrifically accomplished and enjoyable. It restores one's faith in English fiction."

The English Girl (2013)
Margaret Leroy
"What a storyteller Lerory is."

Trust (2014)
Ajay Close
"Ajay Close is brilliant."

The Things You Do for Love (2016)
Rachel Crowther
"A wonderful page-turner of a novel about the complexity of female life."

The Space Between the Stars (2017)
Anne Corlett
"An original thinker and a very, very effective writer."

Tubing (2018)
K A McKeagney
"A modern day Looking for Mr Goodbar."

The Island Child (2020)
Molly Aitken
"The Island Child is the story of a mother's relationship with a misbegotten daughter, sensitively and subtly told."

The Water Garden (2021)
Louise Soraya Black
"Beautifully written and very English in its landscape-love, family-love and garden-love."

Visitors also looked at these authors

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

About Fantastic Fiction Information for Authors