Jeanette Winterson (1959 - *)
Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959. Her mother worked in a textile factory, and she was unmarried when Jeanette was born. Shortly after Jeanette’s birth, her father deserted the family, and in the hope of giving her daughter a better life, her mother put Jeanette up for adoption. Constance and John Winterson subsequently adopted Jeanette, and brought her up in the nearby working-class mill-town of Accrington. The Wintersons were Pentecostal Christians, and Mrs Winterson, who was an ardent advocate of the New Testament, strictly raised Jeanette on the precepts of religious doctrine, and taught her to read and write from the Bible. Mrs Winterson censored Jeanette’s access to ‘secular influences’ because ‘she knew that sedition and controversy are fired by printed matter’. There were only six books allowed in the Winterson home, including the Bible, two commentaries on the Old Testament, Jane Eyre and Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. However, despite Mrs Winterson’s efforts to the contrary, and probably fuelled by her ominous warnings that ‘the trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too late’, Jeanette avidly pursued her reading in secret, hiding books under her mattress and reading by torchlight in the outside toilet.
Jeanette’s early life revolved around the activities of the church. This gave her a sense of community and a busy social outlet in the quiet life of the village, particularly during the summer months, which she spent preaching around the North-West coast in the evangelical Glory Crusades. However, Jeanette’s close affinity with the church ended at the age of sixteen, when she fell in love with another woman. Ostracised by the religious community and disowned by Mrs Winterson, who proclaimed, ‘You’re no daughter of mine’, Jeanette left home. She subsequently managed to support herself through part-time employment, while also studying for her A-levels at a grammar school for girls. She eventually obtained a place at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University, reading English. Winterson wrote her first novel, Oranges are not the Only Fruit, at age twenty-three, and it was published in 1985. This semi-autobiographical novel had wide appeal due to its humour, and it gained critical acclaim winning the Whitbread first novel award. In 1990, Winterson dramatised the novel for BBCTV. Since writing Oranges, Winterson has published extensively, and the experimental style she employed in the novel has become a notable feature of her fiction. Winterson has won many awards around the world. She was awarded an OBE for services to literature, in 2006. In 2011, she published her autobiography Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Jeanette’s early life revolved around the activities of the church. This gave her a sense of community and a busy social outlet in the quiet life of the village, particularly during the summer months, which she spent preaching around the North-West coast in the evangelical Glory Crusades. However, Jeanette’s close affinity with the church ended at the age of sixteen, when she fell in love with another woman. Ostracised by the religious community and disowned by Mrs Winterson, who proclaimed, ‘You’re no daughter of mine’, Jeanette left home. She subsequently managed to support herself through part-time employment, while also studying for her A-levels at a grammar school for girls. She eventually obtained a place at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University, reading English. Winterson wrote her first novel, Oranges are not the Only Fruit, at age twenty-three, and it was published in 1985. This semi-autobiographical novel had wide appeal due to its humour, and it gained critical acclaim winning the Whitbread first novel award. In 1990, Winterson dramatised the novel for BBCTV. Since writing Oranges, Winterson has published extensively, and the experimental style she employed in the novel has become a notable feature of her fiction. Winterson has won many awards around the world. She was awarded an OBE for services to literature, in 2006. In 2011, she published her autobiography Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
