'MARINA WARNER, addressing the Royal Society of Literature at a fellowship induction ceremony in early June, lamented the creatively irrelevant yet distracting pressure that many writers are subjected to, how their ‘personal lives are viewed along with their works’, how their ability to perform in public, their deportment and – beyond that – their lifestyles which might include politics, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, were brought into play, and not only in the process of marketing their works.
'Giving an example, the professor of English and creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London, explained: ‘A student asked me the other day, “Do writers have to be virtuous?” [Previously] the question would more likely be, “Does the writer have to be an outsider, an outcast, a delinquent, a criminal?” The student has sensed an underlying principle, that writers are expected to bear witness to the age and often address the wrongs that are crowding in, in their books and in their lives… But striving to be good is not the same as good writing. Engaging in fictive truth-telling is not the same as winning gold stars for conduct.' (Editorial introduction)
'In 2014 I assembled a collected edition of the poems of the Australian poet Lesbia Harford (1891–1927), whose work had then been out of print for thirty years. The book’s reception was mixed at best, with a number of the reviews complaining that I had focused too much on Harford’s lyricism at the expense of her political writing and activism. There were accusations of ‘gendering’ and ‘marginalisation’: far from strengthening her reputation, I had apparently reduced it to something slight and ‘feminine’. I was stupefied by the reaction, but over time found myself questioning my approach. Perhaps, without realising it, I’d presented a distorted view?' (Introduction)
