Doris May Lessing, The Four-Gated City: Children of Violence Novel Sequence

Anne-Laure Brevet (University of Cambridge)

Ed. by Peter Childs, Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1969

Places

United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Published seven years after The Golden Notebook, The Four-Gated City (1969) is the fifth, final and longest volume of the Children of Violence (1952-1969), a series of autobiographical novels including Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), and Landlocked (1965), which relates the various stages of Lessing’s heroine Martha Quest’s life from adolescence onwards. Undeniably one of Doris Lessing’s major works, it was particularly praised by Horace Engdhal, the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in 2007, when Lessing received the Nobel Prize for Literature. This voluminous novel reveals a turning point in Lessing’s writing career. Its …

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2756 words

Citation: Brevet, Anne-Laure. "The Four-Gated City: Children of Violence Novel Sequence". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=810, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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