Rediscovering Naomi Mitchison

[bibliogramma]

Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of her Life and Work, Lesley A Hall.

Naomi Mitchison was an amazing woman, ahead of her time in many ways. Born in 1898 into the rather remarkable Haldane family, she was many things during her life: an activist, a writer, a journalist, a farmer, a baroness, a Marxist, to name but a few.

Her novels cover a remarkable range of genres, from science fiction and fantasy to history and social commentary, but possibly for that very reason, she has failed to gain the stature she deserves in the lists of authors well worth reading. Every once in a while, it seems, her work – or at least some fraction of it - gets remembered and written about and brought forward, and a few more people have the chance to read something her wrote.

Literary fashion has from time to time tried to abandon her but always returns, fascinated, for another 'rediscovery'. (Source: UK Guardian)

Now, Lesley A Hall has written a short but detailed profile of Mitchison’s life and a critical bibliography of her works that serves as a valuable introduction for anyone interested in this exceptional woman and her work. It is to be fervently hoped that this volume is part of a new, and perhaps more long-lasting than usual, “rediscovery” of Mitchison’s writing. Certainly, in reading this book, I’ve benefited from and enjoyed Hall’s scholarship, which has brought me closer to one of the early feminist voices in speculative fiction.