Doris Lessing

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Doris Lessing

by Ida Kar
2 1/4 inch square film negative, late 1950s, printed 2011
Purchased, 1999
Photographs Collection
NPG x132971

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Ida Kar (1908-1974), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 1567 portraits, Sitter in 137 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Freestone, Clare (appreciation) Wright, Karen (appreciation), Ida Kar Bohemian Photographer, 2011 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 10 March to 19 June 2011), p. 105 Read entry

    Lessing was born in Iran and brought up in Zimbabwe. She left school aged fourteen and began to write. On her arrival in Britain in 1937, Lessing worked as a telephonist in Salisbury and married Frank Wisdom, with whom she had two children, but, feeling trapped, Lessing left her family in 1943. She married Gottfried Lessing after meeting him at the Left Book Club, moved to London with her young son in 1949, and published her debut novel The Grass is Singing in 1950. This photograph resulted from Kar's second portrait session with the author in her Earls Court flat, at the time in which Lessing was writing the novel quintet Children of Violence (1952-69). The stories, about a character called Martha Quest, are strongly influenced by Lessing's own rejection of a domestic role and her involvement with communism. Lessing's novel The Golden Notebook (1962) was heraIded as an example of the new wave of feminism. With her novels in the 1970s she continued to write about the pressures of social conformity, before turning her attention to science fiction. Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

Events of 1950back to top

Current affairs

Princess Anne is born at Clarence house, the only daughter of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Art and science

C.S. Lewis publishes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis was an Oxford Don, specialising in Medieval Literature and its use of allegory. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is often seen as an allegory of the Christian struggle between good and evil.

International

Following the Soviet and American withdrawal from the occupation of North and South Korea respectively, the Korean War breaks out as each side seeks to unify Korea under its own political system. While the U.S.A., U.K and other UN nations came to the defence of South Korea, North Korea had support from the Soviet Union and China. The war continued until 1953.

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