Doris Lessing — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

She won the Nobel Prize in Literature at 87 — the oldest laureate ever — for work the Swedish Academy called an epic of "the female experience" told with "scepticism, fire and visionary power." Doris Lessing spent half a century mapping the internal wars of women and the fractures of civilization, and the world caught up late.

Biography

About

Born in Qajar Iran to British parents in 1919, Lessing moved at six to Southern Rhodesia, where she stayed until 1949, when she left for London. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, appeared in 1950; over the next two decades she built the five-volume Children of Violence sequence, then published The Golden Notebook in 1962 — a book that became a landmark of feminist literature. She wrote The Good Terrorist in 1985 and the five-novel science fiction series Canopus in Argos between 1979 and 1983. In 2001 she received the David Cohen Prize for lifetime achievement in British literature. When t…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

said1985

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything.

— The Good Terrorist (1985)

Doris Lessing

said22 Apr 1984

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful.

— Interview with Herbert Mitgang, "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles", The New York Times, (22 April 1984)

Doris Lessing

said22 Apr 1984

You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. I don't know much about creative writing programs.

— Interview with Herbert Mitgang, "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles," The New York Times (22 April 1984)

Doris Lessing

said1983

It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.

— The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983), p. 94, Flamingo edition

Doris Lessing

said1973