British Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography, 20th Century - Scottish History, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 20th Century - Literary Criticism, Scottish Authors - Biography
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Overview
Jessie Kesson is forever associated with her first novel, the fictionalised autobiography of her early years, The White Bird Passes.. Born illegitimate in a Workhouse and raised in an Elgin slum, she was removed from her beloved but neglectful mother and sent to an orphanage in Kirkton of Skene. There she throve and shone, but was refused any chance of higher education, and ended up a year in a mental hospital. After marriage, she became a cottar wife around North East Scotland, before moving to London, where she combined writing novels and radio plays with jobs from cleaning a cinema to producing Woman's Hour.The first edition of her authorised biography won the National Library of Scotland/Saltire Research Book of the Year in 2000. It revealed an extraordinary woman making her life and art out of all life threw at her, overcoming and transforming it all. This second edition at last reveals the truth about her ever-absent father, here named.
Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor in Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen, currently working on Kesson, Naomi Mitchison and Fred Urquhart.
Editorials
Library Journal
Although not well know in the United States, Jessie Kesson (1916-94) was a much-loved novelist and radio playwright in her native Scotland and in England. Her poverty-filled youth (she was born in an Inverness workhouse and raised in an orphanage) and her life as a farm laborer's wife provided the backdrops for her four short, semi-autobiographical novels. Two of the novels, The White Bird Passes (1958) and Another Time, Another Place (1983), were made into successful films. This "authorized first biography" by Murray, a literary scholar at the University of Aberdeen, captures the uniqueness, humanity, and triumph of a gifted working woman who aspired to write. Using Kesson's published and unpublished writings, Murray sorts through the complexity of facts and fictions, uncovering many contradictions originating with Kesson herself. This readable research project introduces a notable regional writer and is recommended, along with Jessie Kesson's novels, for all collectors of Scottish literature and for those libraries featuring modern British women writers.--Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William and Mary Lib., Williamsburg, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Book Details
Published
July 1, 2000
Publisher
Edinburgh : Canongate, 2000.
Pages
320
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780862419998