Shirley Conran

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Shirley Ida Conran (born September 21, 1932 in London ) is a British novelist and journalist who has also published non-fiction. In the German-speaking countries, she is best known for her romance novels, which in some respects showed feminist traits due to the free choice of topics and language.

Life

Conran was born the daughter of an entrepreneur from several cleaning companies, where she also grew up. She completed her school education at St. Pauls Girls School in Hammersmith and at a boarding school in Switzerland . In St. Pauls she made friends with the later painter Gillian Ayres . At the age of 19, her father, a violent alcoholic, threw Conran out of the house without her mother's resistance. Because of her interest in the techniques of figurative art, she began studying sculpture at Portsmouth Art College (now part of the University of Southampton ), later she studied painting at Chelsea Polytechnic College (now University of London ). Even though she later turned to writing and journalism, her love for art has remained, as her collection of ethnographic works and images of contemporary painting, especially the works of David Hockney, testify.

Shirley Conran eventually attended the University of Portsmouth to study creative writing . In the course of her writing career, she wrote several bestsellers , such as Lace , which has sold around three million copies, which was adapted as a miniseries in the United States, and the non-fiction series Superwoman . Her romance novels, which were particularly popular in the 1980s, have been translated into a total of 20 languages. The island of five women was her most successful novel in German-speaking countries, and it was published several times by various publishers.

In her time as a journalist, she worked as a columnist for Vanity Fair from 1964 , and since the early 1960s as editor of The Daily Mail's “women's section” and features writer for The Observer . In the 1960s she made many contacts and joined Women in Media , one of the feminism organizations of the time .

She was successfully treated for skin cancer and suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from 1970 to 1979 . While overcoming this illness, she wrote with Superwoman. Everywoman's book of household management is a household management book for modern women. The tenor of this successful book was her quotation that life is too short to be wasted filling mushrooms, that is, simply doing household chores for dinner parties. Even if the book was a total bestseller of 750,000 hardcover copies, her publisher at the time knew how to pass the research costs on to you and primarily made a profit from it himself. Still, she stayed with this series and got a lawyer for her US contracts.

Conran was married to British designer, restaurateur, retailer and author Terence Conran from 1955 to 1962. Her two children, Sebastian Conran and Jasper Conran , also work as designers, with Jasper concentrating on designing fashion. In 1994 she was counted as the 84th richest woman in Great Britain. Shirley Conran lives in Cannes , France , in an 11th century château , and in London. She lived in Monaco from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s as her old friend and colleague Anthony Burgess had convinced her that it was much cheaper than the overpriced rents in London. She was married three times in total.

On the occasion of her 80th birthday, Lace was reissued in a revised version and provided with an afterword by the author. Conran himself attached great importance to the fact that words like masturbation , which she was forbidden by the publisher even in the 1980s, are now back in the text. In their opinion, women of their generation were only able to use their own money to gain power over their lives. She herself had to learn this the “hard way” twice in her life - once by being expelled from her parents, the other by divorce at a young age.

“In my teens, money was a dirty word. My parents would say, 'You get everything paid for: what do you want money for? Be grateful for what you've got. ' But what women experience is that money can make unhappiness a great deal more endurable; 99.9 per cent of the goddam globe belongs to men. The importance of money is played down to women - but if it's so unimportant, why have the men got it all? ”-“ During my teenage years, money was a dirty word. My parents would have said, 'You have everything that has been paid for with money: so why do you need money? Be grateful for what you have. ' But experience teaches women that money can make you unhappy more than you can bear; 99.9% of the damn world belongs to men. The importance of money to women is downplayed - but if it is so unimportant, why do men have it? "

In this context, the press described it as interesting that Terence Conran's "official" biography for decades always mentioned the names of the sons, but withheld the name of their birth mother. When her son Jasper stated in an interview that he was estranged from his mother and that she wanted to clarify this over the phone with him, she was surprised to find that he remained unavailable to her due to his professional appointments and saw a real core in this . In the meantime, she expresses herself that she has not spoken to her son Jasper for ten years and said that she had better not have any children. Because, left on her own, she would have had to split herself between career and motherhood. Regardless, she dedicated the new edition of her bestseller Lace to her two sons.

Shirley Conran was also close friends with Diana Spencer , who put her in touch in the field of culture.

Works

Novels

  • Lace. Simon & Schuster 1982.
    • Love. Translated from English by Claus Fischer , Diana-Verlag, Zurich 1984. ISBN 3-905414-05-8 . (After 1988 also published several times under the title Blood Ties )
  • Lace 2nd 1985.
  • The Complete Story. omnibus 1986.
  • Savages. 1987.
  • Crimson. 1992.
  • Tiger Eyes. 1994.
  • The Revenge. (= Revenge of Mimi Quinn. ) 1998.
  • The Amazing Umbrella Shop. 1990.

Non-fiction

  • Superwoman. Everywoman's book of household management. 1975.
  • Superwoman 2nd 1977.
  • Futurewoman: How to Survive Life After Thirty. 1979.
  • Superwoman in Action 1979.
  • The Magic Garden. 1983.
  • Down with Superwoman: For Everyone Who Hates Housework. 1990.

Adaptations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Rachel Cooke: Shirley Conran: all hail the queen of the bonkbuster. In: The Guardian . July 29, 2012. Accessed December 11, 2012. (Interview on the occasion of her upcoming 80th birthday).
  2. ↑ Shirley Conran's CV ( memento of the original from September 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 68 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.w-lb.org.uk
  3. ↑ List of Publications by Conran, Shirley. On: fantasticfiction.co.uk.
  4. ↑ Dawn Maria Clayton: Shirley Conran Gets Out of Housework by Spinning Gold from Lace. In: People . Vol. 18. no. December 23, 1982. Accessed December 12, 2012.
  5. ↑ Conran's introduction of the second edition of WHY ME? My Journey from ME to Health and Happiness . Accessed December 10, 2012.
  6. ↑ a b c d e Angela Lambert: Interview: Shirley's message from Monaco: She knows that if women want power over their lives, they must earn and hold on to their own money. She learned the hard way. In: The Independent . June 8, 1993. Accessed December 12, 2012.
  7. ↑ Melanie McFadyean: How We Met: Ian McAlley and Shirley Conran. In: The Independent . June 27, 1993. Accessed December 12, 2012.
  8. ↑ Benny Johnston: If I could turn back time, I wouldn't have had children: Superwoman author Shirley Conran's startling confession after she hasn't spoken to son Jasper for 10 years. In: Daily Mail . August 3, 2012. Accessed December 12, 2012.
  9. ↑ Donna Bowater: Jasper Conran's mother: My son hasn't seen me for ten years and he won't say why. In: The Telegraph . July 30, 2012. Accessed December 12, 2012.
  10. ^ Richard Kay: The secret of Diana's harem. In: Daily Mail . April 1, 2004. Accessed December 12, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Conran, Shirley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Conran, Shirley Ida (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British novelist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH London