Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

Assoc for Scottish Literature

Naomi Mitchison (née Haldane, 1897–1999) was born #OTD, 1 Nov, & saw almost every day of the #20thcentury. A hugely influential writer, with over 80 books—poetry, politics, historical novels, #ScienceFiction, #Fantasy, #ChildrensLiterature & more—to her credit

A 🎂🧵

“She liked to challenge, she liked to shock, she liked to deliver the unexpected, she liked to experiment”
—Jenni Calder looks at Mitchison’s life & work

1/8

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/09/25/naomi-mitchison/

#Scottish #literature #WomenWriters

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

Century Notes: special Naomi Mitchison issue of THE BOTTLE IMP

🧳 travel narrative MUCKING AROUND
🚀 #scifi SOLUTION THREE
🧚 fairy encounters
👻 Mitchison & the supernatural
🚢 Mitchison: traveller & storyteller
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 reading WE HAVE BEEN WARNED in modern Scotland

2/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2016/06/editorial-century-notes-naomi-mitchison-special-issue/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Womenwriters

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

It means my honour to me,
Making the crops to grow.
And so, and so, Said the farm woman:
But I bruise easy.

—Naomi Mitchison’s “The Farm Woman: 1942” captures the stoicism – & more – of women in wartime

3/8

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #WomenWriters #poetry #warpoetry #WW2

Naomi Mitchison
The Farm Woman: 1942

Why the blue bruises high up on your thigh,
On your right breast and both knees?
Did you get them in the hay in a sweet smother of cries,
Did he tease you and at last please,
With all he had to show?
Oh no, oh no,
Said the farm woman:
But I bruise easy.

Why the scratched hand, was it too sharp a grip,
Buckle or badge or maybe nail,
From one coming quick from camp or ship,
Kissing as hard as hail
That pits deep the soft snow?
Oh no, oh no,
Said the farm woman:
But I bruise easy.

There was nothing, my sorrow, nothing that need be hidden,
But the heavy dung fork slipped in my hand,
I fell against the half-filled cart at the midden;
We were going out to the land.
Nobody had to know.
And so, and so,
Said the farm woman:
For I bruise easy.

The tractor is ill to start, a great heaving and jerking,
The gear lever jars through palm and bone,
But I saw in a film the Russian women working
On the land they had made their own,
And so, and so,
Said the farm woman:
And I bruise easy.

Never tell the men, they will only laugh and say
What use would a woman be!
But I read the war news through, every day;
It means my honour to me,
Making the crops to grow.
And so, and so,
Said the farm woman:
But I bruise easy.

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“Throughout her life, Mitchison was fascinated with the relationship of the ‘real’ & the ‘not real’—of history & fantasy, science & magic, reality & fiction.”

—Exploring Mitchison’s concept of the historical novel as a means of promoting social change

4/8

http://www.readingsjournal.net/2015/06/real-and-not-real-naomi-mitchisons-philosophy-of-the-historical-novel/

#Scottish #literature #WomenWriters #HistoricalFiction

Real and Not Real: Naomi Mitchison's Philosophy of the Historical Novel
June 15, 2015
by Rob Hardy, Carleton College

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“The first time I read Memoirs of a Spacewoman, I felt relief so strongly that it registered as a kind of digestive ache. Here was a woman who had thought about birth in terms I instinctively understood but rarely recognized in the world around me.”

—Jenni Quilter on reproductive possibility in Naomi Mitchison’s speculative fiction

5/8

https://lithub.com/the-optimistic-expansive-visions-of-pregnancy-and-motherhood-in-the-1962-novel-memoirs-of-a-spacewoman/

#Scottish #literature #WomenWriters #ScienceFiction #scifi #SF #speculativefiction #motherhood

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“In the year C.S. Lewis published THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE, 1950, Naomi Mitchison published a very different fantasy novel for children”

—Rob Maslen on how Naomi Mitchison’s THE BIG HOUSE mixes folklore, class war, global conflicts, & the supernatural

6/8

https://thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/naomi-mitchison-the-big-house-1950/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Womenwriters #Fantasy #ChildrensLiterature #class #classwar #folklore

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

CROSSROADS & COINS

“Where might I have gone if, instead of a middle-aged Hobbit enamored of his pantry, I had embraced a girl who lost three homes before choosing the open road?”

—Amal El-Mohtar on discovering Naomi Mitchison’s strange children’s fantasy TRAVEL LIGHT, for @NPR

7/8

https://www.npr.org/2014/01/01/258384937/crossroads-and-coins-naomi-mitchisons-travel-light

#Scottish #literature #WomenWriters #childrensLiterature #KidLit #fantasy #TheHobbit #Tolkien

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“Correction: January 20, 1999, Wednesday An obituary on Saturday about Naomi Mitchison, the British writer and early feminist, misspelled the surname of the Labour Party leader at whom she once threw a half-plucked partridge. He was Hugh Gaitskell, not Gaitskill.”

—Essential correction to Mitchison’s obituary in the NEW YORK TIMES

8/8

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Womenwriters #Labour #LabourParty #feminism

Correction: January 20, 1999, Wednesday An obituary on Saturday about Naomi Mitchison, the British writer and early feminist, misspelled the surname of the Labor Party leader at whom she once threw a half-plucked partridge. He was Hugh Gaitskell, not Gaitskill.