Marina Warner

CV Essays on Culture and Literature

‘Spirits before my face’, in Caribbean Despatches: Stories of Change and Movement, ed. Jane Bryce, London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2006

‘Angels & Engines: Apocalypse and its Aftermath from George W Bush to Philip Pullman’, TLS Aug. 19 and 26 2005; different version published as ‘The Culture of Apocalypse’, Raritan, Fall 2005 VOl XXV, No. 2.

‘Knowing your Daemons: Metamorphosis from The Arabian Nights to Philip Pullman’, in Children’s Literature Global and Local: Social and Aesthetic Perspectives, eds. Emer O’Sullivan, Kimberley Reynolds, Rolf Romoren (Oslo, 2005)

‘Out of the Hell-Broth on to the Pillow: The Metamorphosis of a Frog’, in Kiss the Frog: The Art of Transformation exh. cat., Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, arkitektur og design, Oslo 28 May- 18 Sept 2005.

‘Passionate Cruces: The Art of Dorothy Cross’ in Dorothy Cross, exhibition catalogue, Irish Museum of Modern Art. Dublin, 2005 (Milan; Charta, 2005)

‘Wolf-Girl, Soul-Bird: The Mortal Art of Kiki Smith’, in Kiki Smith, exhibition catalogue for retrospective, Minneapolis – San Francisco, 2005- .

‘Self-Portrait in a Rear-View Mirror’ in Only Make Believe Ways of Playing, catalogue of exhibition at Compton Verney, 2004-5.

‘Hieronymus Bosch: The Hay Wain’, El Bosco y la tradicion pictorica de lo fantastico en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, forthcoming, 2006.

‘Invented Plots: The Enchanted Puppets and Fairy Doubles of Henry Fuseli’, appears in the catalogue of Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination Exhibition at Tate Britain, London, February 15-1 May 2006

‘Insubstantial Pageants: spirit visions, soul traces’, in The Blur of the Otherworldly, ed. Mark Alice Durrant, exhibition catalogue, Baltimore, 2005.

‘Airy Spirits and Spitting Images: Adventures with Ectoplasm’, Vorträge aus dem Warburg-Haus, Vol. 9, Hamburg, 2006

Introduction, Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. New York: New York Review Books, 2006

The Word Unfleshed: Memory in Cyberspace’, Raritan, Spring 2006 (Talk given to The Friends of the Bodleian Library, June 2005)

Introduction, Charles and Mary Lamb, Lamb’s Tales, London: Penguin Classic, 2006.

‘Old Hags’, in City of Disappearances, ed. Iain Sinclair, 2006.

‘Ghosts and Daemons: The Revival of Myth and Magic’, Presidential Address, Virgil Society, Proceedings, 2006.

Introduction to David Parker, Sirens, Gottingen: Steidl, 2006

Uncollected Essays not reprinted in Signs & Wonders:Essays in Literature and Culture, 2003

‘The Making of Imperial Gothic’ Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 2002 Rose Dugdale Sunday Times Magazine 17 August 1974

Introduction to Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. E.J. Richards, New York, 1982..

Introduction, Mildred Cable with Francesca French, The Gobi Desert (London, 1984)

Introduction to Leonora Carrington, The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. London, 1988; and to Leonora Carrington, The Seventh Horse. London, 1988.

‘The Wronged Daughter’, Grand Street VII, 3 (Spring l988), 143-63.

‘Fighting Talk’, in The State of the Language, ed. Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks, London, 1989, 100-109.

‘The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy’, in Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament. Edited Alfred Corn, New York, 1989, 76-82.

‘Valmont - or the Marquise Unmasked’, in The Don Giovanni Book; Myths of Seduction and Betrayal Ed. Jonathan Miller. London, 1990.

The Absent Mother, or, Women against Women in the Old Wives’ Tale’, Inaugural Lecture, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 1991.

‘Laughter and Hope in the Old Wives’ Tale’, La Cenerentola, Programme, Royal Opera House (London, l991),

‘Rich Pickings’, in The Agony and the Ego The Art and Strategy of Fiction Writing Explored, ed. Clare Boylan, London, 1993

Cinema and the Realms of Enchantment. Lectures, Seminars and Essays by Marina Warner and others. Ed Duncan Petrie. London, l994.

‘Between the colonist and the creole: family bonds, family boundaries’, in Unbecoming Daughters of Empire. Ed. Anna Rutherford. Sydney and Mundelstrup, Denmark, l993.

Introduction, The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, ed. Angela Carter London, l993 (A tribute to AC based on the obituary I wrote in the Independent, Feb. 1993)

‘Towards a Democratic Culture’, Charter 88 Paper, l993.

‘Indigo - Mapping the Waters’, in Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines No. 5, Dec. l994.

‘Joan of Arc: A Gender Myth’, in Joan of Arc: Reality and Myth, Ed Jan van Herwaarden. Rotterdam, l994.

‘The Wronged Daughter in Fairytale: “Unnatural Love” in the cult of Saint Dympna and Charles Perrault’s ‘Peau d’ane’, in Saints and Sagas A Symposium, eds. Hans Bekker-Nielsen and Birte Carle Odense, l994

‘The Slipped Retina’, in The Power and the Throne : The Monarchy Debate , ed. Anthony Barnett. London, l994

‘Angela Carter: Bottle Blonde, Double Drag’, in Flesh and the Mirror Essays on the Art of Angela Carter ed. Lorna Sage London, l995

‘Cannibals and Kings’ (On ‘King Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World’)’, in Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600. Eds. Raymond Corbey and Bert Theunissen. Leiden, 1995.

Introduction, Joan of Arc, ed. Monica Furlong. London, l996

‘The Enchantments of Circe’, Raritan XVII:1 Summer l997

‘“Nonsense Is Rebellion”: The Childsplay of Lewis Carroll’, in Lewis Carroll London: The British Council, l998.

‘“Fee Fie Fo Fum” : The child in the jaws of the story’, in Cannibalism and the Colonial World eds. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen. Cambridge, l998.

‘Why Do Ogres Eat Babies? Monstrous Paternity in Myth and Fairytales’, in Paternity and Fatherhood: Myths and Realities, ed. Lieve Spaas, London, l998.

‘“Hush-a-bye Baby”: Death and Violence in the Lullaby’, Raritan, XVIII:1, Summer l998

‘The Old Wives’ Tale’, in The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar, New York, l999. ‘Ogres and storytellers: Strategies of resistance in the Italian fairy tale’, The Italianist No. 17, l997.

‘Peroxide Mug-Shot’, LRB, 1 January 1998 (on Myra Hindley)

‘Les femmes et le secret’ in Le Secret: motif et moteur de la litterature. ed. Chantal Zabus. Louvain, l999.

‘Doubting Thomas’, in There Are Kermodians, ed. Anthony Holden and Ursula Owen (London, l999).

‘A Posy for the Misses Pinwell’ , in The Character of the English Countryside (London, 2000)

‘‘The foul witch’ and her ‘freckled whelp’: Circean mutations in the new world’, in The Tempest and its Travels, ed. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman. London, 2001.

‘The Structure of the Imagination’, in Structure: The Darwin Lectures, l998, ed.Wendy Pullan (Cambridge, 2000)

Introduction, to Iona and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, New York Review of Books, New York and London 2001

‘Leda and the Swan: The Unbearable Matter of Bliss’, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages A Festschrift for Peter Dronke ed. John Marenbon (Leiden, 2000)

‘Le Mythe et la féerie: réécriture et récupération’, Actes du colloque ‘Ou en est-on avec la théorie littéraire?’ (Paris VII, 1999) , eds. Julia Kristeva et Evelyne Grossman , Textuel No. 37. Avril, 2000, pp.85-97

Spirit Visions 1: Figuring the Invisible 2: Materializing the Impalpable Tanner Year Book 22 (1999-2000) Utah, 2001; # 1 reprinted in slightly different form as ‘Spirit Visions: Faces in the Clouds , or,
Figuring the Invisible’, Raritan XXI Spring 2002

Introduction to Lorna Sage, Moments of Truth (London, 2001)

‘Riscritture: traduzioni de storie et metamorfosi del mito’, in Le Riscritture del postmoderno Percorsi Angloamericani, eds. Ornella De Zordo e Fiorenzo Fantaccini (Bari, 2002).

‘Painted Devils and Aery Nothings: Metamorphoses and Magic Art’, Proceedings of International Shakespeare Association Conference: Shakespeare and the Mediterranean,Valencia, May 2001.

‘Embodiments of Wisdom?’, review of Wendy Steiner, The Trouble with Beauty, TLS , March 8 2002

‘Castaway on the Ocean of Story: Metamorphic lives, resurrected texts’ – Plenary talk to German Shakespeare Institute, 28 April 2002, published by Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft , Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band 139/2003

‘Magical Mystery Tourism’, review of Simon During, Modern Enchantments The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Financial Times, 11-12 May 2002

Tribute to W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, winner of Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, 11 April 2002, award ceremony speech.

‘Who’s Sorry Now? : Personal stories, public apologies’. Amnesty Lecture, Oxford 2002, (Oxford University Press, 2004); posted at http://www.opendemocracy.net December 2002.

Preface to Sally Anne Jane Purcell, Collected Poems , edited Peter Jay. London: Anvil Books, 2002

‘Metamorphosis, or Some Thoughts of a Former Bird’, speech at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Dinner in Middle Temple Hall, 19 May 2002, published Brown Book, 2003.

‘The Pillars of Hercules: Plus Ultra , or the limits to “virtù e canoscenza”’, Talk to Dante Society, Oxford, 21 May 2002 ; published Raritan, Spring 2003; ‘Le Colonne di Erocle, plus ultra, o il limite a “virtute e canoscenza” Ovvero oltrepassare il limite’, in Soglie, margini, confine Scriturre in limine, ed, Beatrice Tottosy, Letterature d’Europa e d’America 1- 2004 (Florence, 2004), Italian version (given as lecture in Palermo).

‘Ovid in America’, Raritan XXI Summer 2002.

‘Science at the Séances’, review of Roger Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy, London Review of Books Vol 24, no. 19 3 October 2002.

Preface to How We Recovered the Ashes by P.F.Warner (Centenary Publication, MCC, 2003)

Introduction to The World of Myth, British Museum Press, 2003

Introduction, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (London: Folio Society, 2003)

‘Ectoplasm’, in Eggplant Dreaming, ed. Ivor Indyk, Heat 5 New Series, 2003

Introduction, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Vintage Classics, 2004

Introduction, H.G.Wells, The Time Machine. Penguin Classics, 2005

‘Standing up for sissies’ by Marina Warner, in ‘The Convention on Modern Liberty, The British Debate on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms’, edited by Rosemary Bechler. Open Democracy Imprint Academic, 2010. Pp 268-271.

Magma Poetry: Marina Warner on poet Helen Adam

Signs & Wonders, Essays on Literature and Culture

Chatto & Windus, 2003 and re-printed by Vintage Paperback, October 2004

New

MW Contributed the Guest Choice to Magma Poetry Issue 45 Winter 2009/10. Marina Warner introduces the work of forgotten poet Helen Adam, and her disturbing, gothic poem ‘I Love my Love’. Page 22

MW contributed ‘Beastly Tales’ in Part 7 of Great Fairytales published by The Guardian in October 2009. The stories are all nominated by a panel of critics, writers and experts on children’s literature: Anthony Browne, AS Byatt, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Robert Irwin, Alison Lurie, Adam Phillips, Philip Pullman, Salman Rushdie and Marina Warner.

‘The Difference in the Dose’, Bath Music Festival , published Royal College of Art, London, 2009, with illustrations by Zoe Taylor.

‘Forget My Fate’, short story in Midsummer Nights, ed. Jeanette Winterson, Quercus, 2009

‘Rat and Bear: The Animal Fables of Fischli/Weiss’ in Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Are Animals People? Exhibition catalogue, Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2009

‘The Metamorphoses of Narcissus’, in The Body and the Arts, ed. Corinne Saunders, Palgrave, 2009.

‘Ventriloquism’, review essay of Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam, ed. Daniel Karlin, in London Review of Books

‘Travelling Text’ review essay about the Arabian Nights, in London Review of Books, December 18 2008

‘Afterword:Mirror-Readings’, in The Poetics of Recognition, ed. Marilyn Lawrence and Philip Kennedy, Peter Lang, 2009.

‘Who Can Shave an Egg? Foreign tongues and primal sounds in Mallarmé and Beckett’, Michigan University Press.

‘Out of an old toy chest’, in Journal of Aesthetic Education, special edition ed. Ellen Handler Spitz, Summer 2009 (43.2)

Born London, 1946. Italian mother; English father,bookseller.
Educated: Primary Schooling, Gezira, Cairo, Egypt;Les Dames de Marie, Uccle, Brussels l953-9; St Mary’s Convent, Ascot, Berkshire,UK, l959 –63; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, l964-67: MA Modern Languages(French and Italian -Distinction in French Oral), 1968.

Currently

Professor, Dept. of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex (2004- )

Distinctions and Awards

CBE, 2008
Honorary Fellow, London Institute of Pataphysics,2007
Commendatore dell’ Ordine della Stella diSolidareità, 2005
She was awarded CBE for services to literature in 2005.
Fellow of the British Academy , 2005
Aby Warburg Prize, 2004
Vice-President, Institute of Greece , Rome and Classical Studies, University of Bristol 2004
Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, British Academy, 2000
Honorary Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 2000
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,2000
Katharine Briggs Memorial Prize, 1999
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award 1996
Harvey Darton Prize, 1996
Commonwealth Writer’s Prize ( Eurasia ), 1989
PEN Silver Pen Award, 1988
Booker Prize Short List, 1988
Fawcett Prize, 1986
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,1985
Young Writer of the Year (Daily TelegraphAward),1971.
Runner Up: W.H. Smith Children’s Poetry Prize,1964.

Honorary Degrees

Hon D. Litt University of Oxford, 2006
Hon D.Litt University of Leicester, 2006
Hon.Doc. Royal College of Art, 2004
Hon. Doc, University of Kent, 2005
Hon D. Litt., University of St Andrew ’s, 1998
Hon. Doc., Tavistock Institute (University of East London), 1999
Hon D. Litt., University of St Andrew’s, 1998
Hon D.Litt., University of York, 1997
Hon. Doc., University of North London,1997
Hon D.Litt., University of York, 1997
Hon. Doc., University of North London, 1997
Hon. Doc., Sheffield Hallam University, 1995
Hon. D. Litt., University of Exeter, 1995
Honorary Fellow, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1994

Single lectures include:

Heidelberg University in lecture series ‘The Power of Things’: ‘Talismans and Toys in the 1001 Nights’, October 29 2009
Von Siemens Foundation Lecture, Munich: ‘Flights of Fancy and the 1001 Nights, October 27 2009
BIRTHA lecture, Bristol: ‘Present Enchantments: Magic after the Arabian Nights’, October 19 2009
Jane Harrison Memorial Lecture, Cambridge, May 2008
Presidential Lecture, Stanford, 14 April 2008
Hussey Lecture, Oxford: ‘Wise Men from the East: The Knowledge of Strangers’, 2008
Getty Museum Lecture on ‘Beasts’, for exhibition of medieval manuscripts, July 22 2007
Beatrice Blackwood Lecture, Oxford, May 23 2007
‘What is Enchantment?’ Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, Conference, January 2006.
Alan Marre Maccabaeus Lecture, University College London, 2005: ‘Stranger Magic: The Psychic Geography of Darkness’
Carpenter Lecturer, Institute of the Visual Arts,Harvard University, 2003
The Perrot-Warrick Lecture at Trinity, 1998
John Coffin Lecture, University of London, 1997

Marina Warner has given many other lectures and seminars and participated in conferences in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia and the United States, inuniversities and institutes including, for example, the Getty Museum, the National Gallery London, Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Andrew’s. Lectured for the British Council, in Japan, the University of the WestIndies (Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia), Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and the Ukraine. Readings, panel discussions,and debates at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, The Purcell Room, London, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Edinburgh Books Festival, et al.

Publications - Cultural History and Criticism

The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought (Collected essays on art), forthcoming Violette Editions 2008
Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media, Oxford University Press, 2006.
Signs &Wonders: Essays in Literature and Culture (Chatto & Windus,2003)
Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (Clarendon Lectures), Oxford , 2002
No Go the Bogeyman: On Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock.1998.
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales andtheir Tellers. 1994.
Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. The 1994 Reith Lectures (London, 1994) (US title: Six Myths of Our Time, New York, l995)
L’Atalante. 1994
Into the Dangerous World. Some reflections on childhood and its costs. 1988.
Monuments & Maidens The allegory of the female form. 1985.
Joan of Arc: The image of female heroism, London, 1981.
Alone of All Her Sex The myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary. 1976
The Dragon Empress The life and times of Tz’u-hsi, Empress Dowager of China, 1835-1980. 1972

CV Publications - Stories

‘A Family Friend’, short story for series Alan Howard Reads, Radio 4, 2008. With introduction, International Literary Quarterly, Issue No. 4, August 2008.

’Mother Rat’ (memoir), in ‘Grandparents: A Celebration’ edited by Sarah Brown and Gil McNeil, Ebury Press ‘Mélusine’, a short story translated into French (first publication), in Marie- Claude de Brunhoff, Theatres Immobiles, ed. René de Ceccatty (Paris, Seuil, 2008)

‘Lord of the Dance; Five Pieces for Ram Gopal’.

Two tales for Barbara Campbell.

‘Forget My Fate’, in Midsummer Nights, ed.Jeanette Winterson (stories after opera for Glyndebourne)’.

Cristina’s Cell’, first broadcast Radio 4,in series I Want to Be Alone, appearing in Italian, 2009.

International Literary Quarterly, No.4,http://www.interlitq.org/ ‘Melusine’, short story in Marie-Claudede Brunhoff, Theatres Immobiles (Paris: Seuil, 2008)

‘After the Fo’, in Don’t Know a Good Thing: the Asham Award Collection, ed. Kate Pullinger (Bloomsbury, 2006).

‘Ladybird, Ladybird’, published Harpers, December 2005.

‘Out of the Burning House’, broadcast Radio 4, 2004.

‘My first communion’, in Rites of Passage, ed. Kate Reardon, supplement for PEN, Vanity Fair, August 2006.

‘Spirits before my face’, in Caribbean Despatches:Stories of Change and Movement, ed. Jane Bryce, London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2006.

‘Old Hags’, in City of Disappearances, ed. Iain Sinclair, 2006.

‘Cancellanda’, Raritan III, Number 2, Fall 2003; Wasafiri, 2004. (Reprinted in Italian as small volume, trans. Marcella Romeo Lovison (Palermo: Quattrosoli, 2004).

‘Worm Wrangler’, Heat (Sydney, 2003).

‘Rapture’, Otherworlds: Nancy Spero and Kiki Smith, ed. Jon Bird (London: Reaktion Books, 2003).

‘After the Fo’,in Asham Short Stories, ed. Kate Pullinger, forthcoming, 2005.

‘Birgitta’s Cell’, BBC Radio 4,2005.

Publications - Essays

‘Baba Yaga Laid an Egg’ by Dubravka Ugresic, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson. London Review of Books,Volume 31 Number 16, 27 August 2009. Pages 23-24
The Guardian Review Arts, Saturday Guardian 04 July 2009. ‘Heart of Stone’ On Peter Randall-Pages ‘exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park,Wakefield until Jan 2010. Page 18
‘Who Can Shave An Egg?: Foreign Tongues and Primal Sounds in Mallarmeand Beckett. ‘Reflections on Beckett -A Centenary Celebration’
Anna McMullan and S.E Wilmer, Editors Foreword by Dennis Kennedy. TheUniversity of Michigan Press / Ann Arbor 2009. Pages 53-81
‘Remote Viewing’ by Susan MacWilliam. Extracts from Phantasmagoria byMarina Warner. Black Dog Publishing London 2009. Pages 56-57
‘All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare’ - ‘Once Upon A Time In Rossillion’ by Marina Warner. May 2009 National Theatre Programme
Garsington Opera Programme 2009
‘Other Cinderella’s by Marina Warner Pages 54-56
Glyndebourne Opera Programme 2009
Rusalka ‘The Silence of The Siren’ by Marina Warner, Pages 92-97 an extract from The Beast to The Blonde (Vintage)
‘Wham!’ Aaargh! Boo! Oooh! Is there a natural value to certain noises?’ Forthcoming in Soundtrack, October 2007 and in proceedings of conference [http://www.schoolofsound.co.uk/], London 2009
‘Who Can Shave an Egg? From speech to silence in Mallarmé and Beckett’ [from lecture in April 2006 at the close of the Beckett Centenary Festival in Dublin], Michigan University Press, 2008.
‘Schaulager Museum , Basel , 2007
‘Darkness Visible: The view from the shadows’ [extracts from Phantasmagoria], Cabinet , March 2007
‘Maya Deren: Dancing the White Darkness’, Tate Etc Magazine, Spring 2007
‘Wolf-Girl, Soul-Bird: The Mortal Art of Kiki Smith’, in Kiki Smith, exhibition catalogue for retrospective, Minneapolis - San Francisco, New York, 2005 - 7.
Introduction, Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns andFairies, New York Review Books, forthcoming.2006
Introduction, Charles Lamb, Lamb’s Tales, Penguin Classic,forthcoming 2006.
‘Singing Each to Each’, Introduction to David Parker, Sirens,Gottingen : Steidl, 2006
‘Light Drawing In: The Art of Tacita Dean’[proceedings of conference, ‘Walking’, Summer 2006],
Introduction, Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare, London: Penguin Classic, 2006.
‘Ghosts and Daemons: The Revival of Myth and Magic’, PresidentialAddress, Virgil Society, Proceedings, 2006.
‘Airy Spirits and Spitting Images: Adventures with Ectoplasm’,Vorträge aus dem Warburg-Haus, Vol. 9, Hamburg, 2006
Introduction, Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. New York : New York Review Books, 2006
‘Hieronymus Bosch: The Hay Wain’, El Boscoy la tradicion pictorica delo fantastico en el Museo del Prado, Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2006.
’The Word Unfleshed: Memory in Cyberspace’, Raritan, Spring 2006
‘Invented Plots: The Enchanted Puppets and Fairy Doubles of Henry Fuseli’, in Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination, eh. cat. ,Tate Britain, London, February 15-1 May 2006
Interview with Tacita Dean, in Tacita Dean (Phaidon, 2006)
‘Angels & Engines: Apocalypse and its Aftermath from George W Bushto Philip Pullman’, TLS Aug. 19 and 26 2005;
different version published as ‘The Cultureof Apocalypse’, Raritan,Fall 2005 Vol V, No. 2.
‘Knowing your Daemons: Metamorphosis from The Arabian Nights to Philip Pullman’, in Children’s Literature Global and Local: Social and Aesthetic Perspectives, eds. Emer O’Sullivan, Kimberley Reynolds, Rolf Romoren (Oslo,2005)
‘Out of the Hell-Broth on to the Pillow: The Metamorphosis of a Frog’,in Kiss the Frog: The Art of Transformation eh. cat., Nasjonal Museet for Kunst, arkitektur og design, Oslo 28 May- 18 Sept 2005.
‘Passionate Cruces: The Art of Dorothy Cross’ in Dorothy Cross, exhibition catalogue, Irish Museum of Modern Art. Dublin, 2005 (Milan; Charta, 2005)
‘Self-Portrait in a Rear-View Mirror’ in Only Make Believe: Ways ofPlaying, catalogue of ehibition at Compton Verney,2004-5.
‘Insubstantial Pageants: spirit visions, soul traces’, in The Blur ofthe Otherworldly, ed. Mark Alice Durrant, ehibition catalogue, Baltimore, 2005.
Talk given to The Friends of the Bodleian Library, June 2005
Premio Napoli (2004- ); Premio Crotone (2005-).
Introduction, H.G.Wells, The Time Machine Penguin Classics, 2005
‘The Pillars of Hercules: Plus Ultra, or the limits to “virtùecanoscenza”’, Talk to Dante Society, Oxford, 21 May 2002; published Raritan, Spring 2003‘ Ovid in America’, Raritan Summer 2002; translated, Palermo , 2004
Introduction, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Vintage Classics, 2004
‘Metamorphosis, or Some Thoughts of a Former Bird’, speech at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Dinner in Middle Temple Hall,19 May 2002, published Brown Book, 2003
‘Castaway on the Ocean of Story: Metamorphic lives, resurrected tets’– Plenary talk to German Shakespeare Institute, 28 April 2002, published by Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band, Sept 2003
‘Spirits before my face’, in Caribbean Despatches: Stories of Changeand Movement’, ed. Jane Bryce, Macmillan Palgrave, forthcoming.
Numerous reviews (principally of books andehibitions) and shorter articles in various publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The London Review of Books, The New York Times BookReview, NY Times Magazine, The Independent, and The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian Review.
Judge of Booker Prize (l985),
Judge of Arts Council Award
George Orwell Prize (2003);
Preface to How We Recovered the Ashes by P.F.Warner (Centenary Publication, MCC, 2003)
Introduction to The World of Myth, British Museum Press, 2003
Introduction, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night ( London :Folio Society, 2003)
‘Ectoplasm’, in Eggplant Dreaming, ed.Ivor Indyk, Heat 5 New Series, 2003
Spirit Visions 1: Figuring the Invisible 2: Materializingthe Impalpable Tanner Year Book 22 (1999-2000) Utah , 2001;
Introduction to Lorna Sage, Moments of Truth (London ,2001)
‘Painted Devils and Aery Nothings: Metamorphoses and Magic Art’, Proceedings of International Shakespeare Association Conference: Shakespeare and the Mediterranean, Valencia, May 2001.
# 1 reprinted in slightly different formas ‘Spirit Visions: Faces inthe Clouds , or, Figuring the Invisible’, RaritanI Spring 2002
‘Riscritture: traduzioni de storie et metamorfosi del mito’, in Le Riscritture del postmoderno Percorsi Angloamericani,eds. Ornella De Zordo e Fiorenzo Fantaccini (Bari , 2002).
‘Embodiments of Wisdom?’, review of Wendy Steiner, The Trouble withBeauty, TLS , March 8 2002
‘Magical Mystery Tourism’, review of Simon During, Modern Enchantments The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Financial Times, 11-12 May 2002
Tribute to W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, winner of Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, 11 April 2002, award ceremony speech.
‘Who’s Sorry Now?: Personal stories, public apologies’. Amnesty Lecture, Oxford 2002, (Oxford University Press, 2004); posted at http://www.opendemocracy.net December 2002.
Preface to Sally Anne Jane Purcell, Collected Poems , edited Peter Jay. London : Anvil Books, 2002
‘Science at the Séances’, review of Roger Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy, London Review of Books Vol 24, no.19 3 October 2002.
Introduction, Joan of Arc, ed. Monica Furlong. London, 1996
‘‘The foul witch’ and her ‘freckled whelp’: Circean mutations in the new world’, in The Tempest and its Travels, ed. Peter Hulme. London, 2001.
‘The Structure of the Imagination’, in Structure: The Darwin Lectures, 1998, ed.Wendy Pullan ( Cambridge, 2000)
Introduction, to Iona and Peter Opie, TheLore and Language of Schoolchildren, New York Review of Books, New York and London 2001
‘Leda and the Swan: The Unbearable Matter of Bliss’, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages A Festschrift for Peter Dronke ed. John Marenbon (Leiden , 2000)
‘Le Mythe et la féerie: réécritureet récupération’, Actesdu colloque ‘Ou en est-on avec la théorie littéraire?’ (Paris VII, 1999) , eds.Julia Kristeva et Evelyne Grossman , Tetuel No. 37.Avril, 2000, pp.85-97
‘A Posy for the Misses Pinwell’, in The Character of the English Countryside (London , 2000)
‘Les femmes et le secret’ in Le Secret: motif et moteur de lalitterature. ed. Chantal Zabus. Louvain, l999.
‘Doubting Thomas’, in There Are Kermodians, ed. Anthony Holden and Ursula Owen ( London , l999).
‘The Old Wives’ Tale’, in The ClassicFairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar, NewYork , l999.
‘“Nonsense Is Rebellion”: The Childs play of Lewis Carroll’, in LewisCarroll London : The British Council, l998.
‘“Fee Fie Fo Fum”: The child in the jaws of the story’, in Cannibalism and the Colonial World eds. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, MargaretIversen. Cambridge , l998.
‘Why Do Ogres Eat Babies? Monstrous Paternity in Myth and Fairytales’,in Paternity and Fatherhood: Myths and Realities, ed. Lieve Spaas, London , 1998.
‘“Hush-a-bye Baby”: Death and Violence in the Lullaby’, Raritan ,VIII:1, Summer l998
‘Peroide Mug-Shot’, LRB, 1 January 1998 (on Myra Hindley)
‘The Enchantments of Circe’, Raritan VII:1 Summer l997
‘Ogres and storytellers: Strategies of resistance in the Italian fairytale’, The Italianist No. 17, 1997.
‘Angela Carter: Bottle Blonde, Double Drag’, in Flesh and the MirrorEssays on the Art of Angela Carter ed. Lorna Sage London, 1995
‘Cannibals and Kings’ (On ‘King Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World’)’,in Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600.Eds. Raymond Corbey and Bert Theunissen. Leiden , 1995.
‘Indigo - Mapping the Waters’, in EtudesBritanniques Contemporaines No. 5, Dec. 1994.
‘Joan of Arc: A Gender Myth’, in Joan of Arc: Reality and Myth, Ed Janvan Herwaarden. Rotterdam , 1994.
‘The Slipped Retina’, in The Power and the Throne: The Monarchy Debate, ed. Anthony Barnett. London, 1994
‘The Wronged Daughter in Fairytale: “Unnatural Love” in the cult of Saint Dympna and Charles Perrault’s’ Peau d’ane’, in Saints and Sagas ASymposium, eds. Hans Bekker-Nielsen and Birte Carle Odense, 1994
Cinema and the Realms of Enchantment. Lectures, Seminars and Essays by Marina Warner and others. Ed Duncan Petrie. London, 1994.
‘Rich Pickings’, in The Agony and the Ego The Art and Strategy ofFiction Writing Eplored, ed. Clare Boylan, London , 1993
Introduction, The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, ed. Angela Carter London, l993 (A tribute to AC based on the obituary I wrote in the Independent, Feb.1993)
‘Towards a Democratic Culture’, Charter 88 Paper, 1993.
‘Between the colonist and the creole: family bonds, family boundaries’, in Unbecoming Daughters of Empire. Ed. Anna Rutherford. Sydney and Mundelstrup, Denmark, 1993.
The Absent Mother, or, Women against Women in the Old Wives’ Tale’, Inaugural Lecture, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 1991.
‘Laughter and Hope in the Old Wives’ Tale’, La Cenerentola, Programme, Royal Opera House (London, 1991),
‘Valmont - or the Marquise Unmasked’, inThe Don Giovanni Book; Myths of Seduction and Betrayal Ed. Jonathan Miller. London, l990.
Introduction to Leonora Carrington, The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. London, 1988; and to Leonora Carrington, The Seventh Horse. London, 1988.
‘The Wronged Daughter’, Grand Street VII,3 (Spring 1988),143-63.
‘Fighting Talk’, in The State of the Language, ed. Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks, London , 1989, 100-109.
Introduction, Mildred Cable with Francesca French, The Gobi Desert (London, 1984)
Introduction to Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies,trans. E.J. Richards, New York, 1982..
‘The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy’, in Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament. Edited Alfred Corn, New York , 1989,76-82.
Uncollected (not reprinted in Signs &Wonders) Rose Dugdale Sunday Times Magazine 17 August 1974

Film, Television & Radio

Marina Warner has participated in many television, film and radio broadcasts in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia and the United States.

February 14th, 2010 MW was interviewed for the Channel 4 documentary ‘The Bible: A History’ for Episode 4 ‘The Daughters of Eve’.

Trusteeships, campaigns & causes

Trustee of The National Portrait Gallery.

Management Committee, Vice-President, National Council for One-Parent Families, 2000-

Gingerbread (Formed from the merger of the National Council for One Parent Families and Gingerbread), 1986-1996

Literature Panel, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1993-7

Executive Committee, Charter 88, 1992-7

London Library, twice served

Patron, Hypatia Trust, 1998-

Trustee, Artangel Trust, 1998-2004

Trustee, Open Democracy, 2001-3

Committee PEN, London, 2001-2004

Patron, Wonderful Beast Theatre Company, 2001-

Patron of the charities Reprieve, 2002-

Patron, Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture, 2002-

Patron, Society for Story Telling, 2003-

Trustee, George Orwell Society, 2003-

Patron, Hosking Houses Trust, 2006-

The Voice of the Toy: Writing Magic and Enchanted States

Stanford University, 14 April 2008

Marina Warner’s talk included bottle imps, genies in lamps, flying carpets, speaking fruits, toys, and severed heads. Touching on the influence of “Arabian Nights” and other Eastern narratives on western European fictions, Warner discussed the changing uses of enchantment in contemporary imagination, the different states of belief and disbelief that are developing, and the experience of the “digital uncanny.”

World Literature Weekend

World Literature Weekend, 19 August 2009 for London Review of Books.

Marina Warner addressed the wide variation in translated versions of Russian texts. Her conversation with Robert Chandler focuses on Andrey Platonov in particular. Chandler has translated and co-translated several of Platonovs novels, including, with Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson, a new edition of the absurdist parable The Foundation Pit, Platonovs most overtly political book, written in direct response to the brutalities of Stalins collectivisation of Russian agriculture. It is a literary masterpiece which deforms and transforms language in seeking to evoke unspeakable realities. This English translation is the first and only one to be based on the definitive edition published by Pushkin House in Moscow.

Marina Warner writes about her work

I liked reading first and then writing; and inside stories was the place I wanted to be, especially stories that went beyond any experience I could live myself at first hand. The very first stories I heard were saints’ lives: the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of the Virgin Mary, the terrible gory violence of the martyrs’ ends. I learned from my Catholic childhood how to visualise when praying and how to examine my conscience: both excellent disciplines if you want to write.

Then I discovered myths, wonder tales and fairy lore: ordinary life went on but I was diving to the bottom of the sea with weights on my feet to pick the flower of immortal life and then losing the magic elixir to a passing snake – for ever; I was dipping my finger in dragon’s blood and tasting it and then finding I could listen in on the conversation of the birds and hear what animals were saying; I was saving my numerous brothers who had been turned into swans by knitting them shirts made from nettles which I’d spun into thread with blistered, burning fingers; with Electra I was helping murder her father – I could go on, but these are the kinds of stories that kept me reading under the covers with a torch, stories that every culture created long before print or even, perhaps, writing itself.

When I first encountered myths and fairy tales, the wonder I felt was pure wonder. But as I have grown older, wonder has taken on its double aspect, and become questioning too. In all my writing, fiction and other, I wonder what the work of the imagination means, and what it does and can do. Using a historical perspective, I try to explore the way imagination leads understanding, how fantasy shapes goals and values for individuals as well as societies. I look for mythic material now in other places besides the covers of fairy books: my work explores the interactions of imagination and reality in art and literature and the effects they have both on individuals and societies: how ideas about the middle east, for example, are imbued with fantasies from Salome’s dance to Aladdin pantomimes. The literature of the imagination isn’t separate from ethical and political issues and facts; it develops in active dialogue with them, illuminates experience in history and now, and I believe its effects are overlooked and misunderstood, with sometimes dangerous consequences.

My critical and historical books and essays explore different figures in myth and fairy tale and the art and literature they have inspired, from my early studies of the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc to more recent work on the Arabian Nights. My fiction runs parallel to this, as I often draw on mythic or other imaginary predecessors to translate them into contemporary significance – to re-vision them. Stories come from the past but speak to the present (if you taste the dragon’s blood and can hear what they say). I need to write stories as well as deconstruct and analyse them because I don’t want to damage the mysterious flight of imagination at the core of storytelling, the part that escapes what is called rational understanding.

I hope, I believe that literature can be ‘strong enough to help’, to borrow Seamus Heaney’s wonderful comment about poetry.
MW April 21 2010

Please see home and current news and Curriculum Vitae

Essays on Culture and Literature

‘Spirits before my face’, in Caribbean Despatches: Stories of Change and Movement, ed. Jane Bryce, London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2006
‘Angels & Engines: Apocalypse and its Aftermath from George W Bush to Philip Pullman’, TLS Aug. 19 and 26 2005; different version published as ‘The Culture of Apocalypse’, Raritan, Fall 2005 VOl XXV, No. 2.
‘Knowing your Daemons: Metamorphosis from The Arabian Nights to Philip Pullman’, in Children’s Literature Global and Local: Social and Aesthetic Perspectives, eds. Emer O’Sullivan, Kimberley Reynolds, Rolf Romoren (Oslo, 2005)
‘Out of the Hell-Broth on to the Pillow: The Metamorphosis of a Frog’, in Kiss the Frog: The Art of Transformation exh. cat., Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, arkitektur og design, Oslo 28 May- 18 Sept 2005.
‘Passionate Cruces: The Art of Dorothy Cross’ in Dorothy Cross, exhibition catalogue, Irish Museum of Modern Art. Dublin, 2005 (Milan; Charta, 2005)
‘Wolf-Girl, Soul-Bird: The Mortal Art of Kiki Smith’, in Kiki Smith, exhibition catalogue for retrospective, Minneapolis – San Francisco, 2005- .
‘Self-Portrait in a Rear-View Mirror’ in Only Make Believe Ways of Playing, catalogue of exhibition at Compton Verney, 2004-5.

‘Hieronymus Bosch: The Hay Wain’, El Bosco y la tradicion pictorica de lo fantastico en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, forthcoming, 2006.
‘Invented Plots: The Enchanted Puppets and Fairy Doubles of Henry Fuseli’, appears in the catalogue of Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination Exhibition at Tate Britain, London, February 15-1 May 2006
‘Insubstantial Pageants: spirit visions, soul traces’, in The Blur of the Otherworldly, ed. Mark Alice Durrant, exhibition catalogue, Baltimore, 2005.
‘Airy Spirits and Spitting Images: Adventures with Ectoplasm’, Vorträge aus dem Warburg-Haus, Vol. 9, Hamburg, 2006
Introduction, Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. New York: New York Review Books, 2006
The Word Unfleshed: Memory in Cyberspace’, Raritan, Spring 2006 (Talk given to The Friends of the Bodleian Library, June 2005)
Introduction, Charles and Mary Lamb, Lamb’s Tales, London: Penguin Classic, 2006.
‘Old Hags’, in City of Disappearances, ed. Iain Sinclair, 2006.
‘Ghosts and Daemons: The Revival of Myth and Magic’, Presidential Address, Virgil Society, Proceedings, 2006.
Introduction to David Parker, Sirens, Gottingen: Steidl, 2006

Uncollected Essays not reprinted in Signs & Wonders:Essays in Literature and Culture, 2003

‘The Making of Imperial Gothic’ Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 2002 Rose Dugdale Sunday Times Magazine 17 August l974
Introduction to Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. E.J. Richards, New York, l982..
Introduction, Mildred Cable with Francesca French, The Gobi Desert (London, l984)
Introduction to Leonora Carrington, The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. London, l988; and to Leonora Carrington, The Seventh Horse. London, l988.
‘The Wronged Daughter’, Grand Street VII, 3 (Spring l988), 143-63.
‘Fighting Talk’, in The State of the Language, ed. Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks, London, l989, 100-109.
‘The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy’, in Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament. Edited Alfred Corn, New York, l989, 76-82.
‘Valmont - or the Marquise Unmasked’, in The Don Giovanni Book; Myths of Seduction and Betrayal Ed. Jonathan Miller. London, l990.
The Absent Mother, or, Women against Women in the Old Wives’ Tale’, Inaugural Lecture, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, l991.
‘Laughter and Hope in the Old Wives’ Tale’, La Cenerentola, Programme, Royal Opera House (London, l991),
‘Rich Pickings’, in The Agony and the Ego The Art and Strategy of Fiction Writing Explored, ed. Clare Boylan, London, 1993
Cinema and the Realms of Enchantment. Lectures, Seminars and Essays by Marina Warner and others. Ed Duncan Petrie. London, l994.
‘Between the colonist and the creole: family bonds, family boundaries’, in Unbecoming Daughters of Empire. Ed. Anna Rutherford. Sydney and Mundelstrup, Denmark, l993.
Introduction, The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, ed. Angela Carter London, l993 (A tribute to AC based on the obituary I wrote in the Independent, Feb. 1993)
‘Towards a Democratic Culture’, Charter 88 Paper, l993.
‘Indigo - Mapping the Waters’, in Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines No. 5, Dec. l994.
‘Joan of Arc: A Gender Myth’, in Joan of Arc: Reality and Myth, Ed Jan van Herwaarden. Rotterdam, l994.
‘The Wronged Daughter in Fairytale: “Unnatural Love” in the cult of Saint Dympna and Charles Perrault’s ‘Peau d’ane’, in Saints and Sagas A Symposium, eds. Hans Bekker-Nielsen and Birte Carle Odense, l994
‘The Slipped Retina’, in The Power and the Throne : The Monarchy Debate , ed. Anthony Barnett. London, l994
‘Angela Carter: Bottle Blonde, Double Drag’, in Flesh and the Mirror Essays on the Art of Angela Carter ed. Lorna Sage London, l995
‘Cannibals and Kings’ (On ‘King Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World’)’, in Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600. Eds. Raymond Corbey and Bert Theunissen. Leiden, 1995.
Introduction, Joan of Arc, ed. Monica Furlong. London, l996
‘The Enchantments of Circe’, Raritan XVII:1 Summer l997
‘“Nonsense Is Rebellion”: The Childsplay of Lewis Carroll’, in Lewis Carroll London: The British Council, l998.
‘“Fee Fie Fo Fum” : The child in the jaws of the story’, in Cannibalism and the Colonial World eds. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen. Cambridge, l998.
‘Why Do Ogres Eat Babies? Monstrous Paternity in Myth and Fairytales’, in Paternity and Fatherhood: Myths and Realities, ed. Lieve Spaas, London, l998.
‘“Hush-a-bye Baby”: Death and Violence in the Lullaby’, Raritan, XVIII:1, Summer l998
‘The Old Wives’ Tale’, in The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar, New York, l999. ‘Ogres and storytellers: Strategies of resistance in the Italian fairy tale’, The Italianist No. 17, l997.
‘Peroxide Mug-Shot’, LRB, 1 January 1998 (on Myra Hindley)
‘Les femmes et le secret’ in Le Secret: motif et moteur de la litterature. ed. Chantal Zabus. Louvain, l999.
‘Doubting Thomas’, in There Are Kermodians, ed. Anthony Holden and Ursula Owen (London, l999).
‘A Posy for the Misses Pinwell’ , in The Character of the English Countryside (London, 2000)
‘‘The foul witch’ and her ‘freckled whelp’: Circean mutations in the new world’, in The Tempest and its Travels, ed. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman. London, 2001.
‘The Structure of the Imagination’, in Structure: The Darwin Lectures, l998, ed.Wendy Pullan (Cambridge, 2000)
Introduction, to Iona and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, New York Review of Books, New York and London 2001
‘Leda and the Swan: The Unbearable Matter of Bliss’, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages A Festschrift for Peter Dronke ed. John Marenbon (Leiden, 2000)
‘Le Mythe et la féerie: réécriture et récupération’, Actes du colloque ‘Ou en est-on avec la théorie littéraire?’ (Paris VII, 1999) , eds. Julia Kristeva et Evelyne Grossman , Textuel No. 37. Avril, 2000, pp.85-97
Spirit Visions 1: Figuring the Invisible 2: Materializing the Impalpable Tanner Year Book 22 (1999-2000) Utah, 2001; # 1 reprinted in slightly different form as ‘Spirit Visions: Faces in the Clouds , or, Figuring the Invisible’, Raritan XXI Spring 2002
Introduction to Lorna Sage, Moments of Truth (London, 2001)
‘Riscritture: traduzioni de storie et metamorfosi del mito’, in Le Riscritture del postmoderno Percorsi Angloamericani, eds. Ornella De Zordo e Fiorenzo Fantaccini (Bari, 2002).
‘Painted Devils and Aery Nothings: Metamorphoses and Magic Art’, Proceedings of International Shakespeare Association Conference: Shakespeare and the Mediterranean,Valencia, May 2001.
‘Embodiments of Wisdom?’, review of Wendy Steiner, The Trouble with Beauty, TLS , March 8 2002
‘Castaway on the Ocean of Story: Metamorphic lives, resurrected texts’ – Plenary talk to German Shakespeare Institute, 28 April 2002, published by Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft , Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band 139/2003
‘Magical Mystery Tourism’, review of Simon During, Modern Enchantments The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Financial Times, 11-12 May 2002
Tribute to W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, winner of Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, 11 April 2002, award ceremony speech.
‘Who’s Sorry Now? : Personal stories, public apologies’. Amnesty Lecture, Oxford 2002, (Oxford University Press, 2004); posted at http://www.opendemocracy.net December 2002.
Preface to Sally Anne Jane Purcell, Collected Poems , edited Peter Jay. London: Anvil Books, 2002
‘Metamorphosis, or Some Thoughts of a Former Bird’, speech at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Dinner in Middle Temple Hall, 19 May 2002, published Brown Book, 2003.
‘The Pillars of Hercules: Plus Ultra , or the limits to “virtù e canoscenza”’, Talk to Dante Society, Oxford, 21 May 2002 ; published Raritan, Spring 2003; ‘Le Colonne di Erocle, plus ultra, o il limite a “virtute e canoscenza” Ovvero oltrepassare il limite’, in Soglie, margini, confine Scriturre in limine, ed, Beatrice Tottosy, Letterature d’Europa e d’America 1- 2004 (Florence, 2004), Italian version (given as lecture in Palermo).
‘Ovid in America’, Raritan XXI Summer 2002.
‘Science at the Séances’, review of Roger Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy, London Review of Books Vol 24, no. 19 3 October 2002.
Preface to How We Recovered the Ashes by P.F.Warner (Centenary Publication, MCC, 2003)
Introduction to The World of Myth, British Museum Press, 2003
Introduction, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (London: Folio Society, 2003)
‘Ectoplasm’, in Eggplant Dreaming, ed. Ivor Indyk, Heat 5 New Series, 2003
Introduction, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Vintage Classics, 2004
Introduction, H.G.Wells, The Time Machine. Penguin Classics, 2005
‘Knowing your Daemons: Metamorphosis from The Arabian Nights to Philip Pullman’, in Children’s Literature Global and Local: Social and Aesthetic Perspectives, eds. Emer O’Sullivan, Kimberley Reynolds, Rolf Romoren. Oslo, 2005.

Art Criticism

For art criticism please go to Publications, essays on art.

'No Woman, No Cry' by Chris Ofili, 1998 Tate Britain

Judge and Selector

Judge for The Jerwood Drawing Prize, 2002
Judge for The Turner Prize at Tate Britain, 1998
Exhibition Selector for BT New Contemporaries, 1992

Only Make Believe - Ways of Playing

Compton Verney Exhibitions, 25 March - 5 June 2005

Curated by Marina Warner, ‘Only Make-Believe’ explores the innate relationship between play, make-believe and art, through the work of over thirty modern and contemporary artists. The link between play and creativity deepened during the twentieth-century and the exhibition focuses on the important historical, social, psychological and cultural aspects of this subject. This exhibition includes the work of Francis Alÿs, Ida Applebroog, Clive Barker, Hans Bellmer, Christian Boltanski, Mat Collishaw, Dorothy Cross, Adam Dant, Henry Darger, Erno Goldfinger, Roger Hilton, Joan Jonas, Glenn Kaino, Wassily Kandinsky, Zbigniew Libera, Melissa McGill, Wendy McMurdo, Annette Messager, Piet Mondrian, The Brothers Quay, Paula Rego, Gerrit Rietveld, Laurie Simmons, Kiki Smith, Monika Sosnowska, Jo Stockham, Richard Wentworth, Sarah Woodfine and Kumi Yamashita.

Thomas Gainsborough (RA) 'Wooded Moonlight Landscape with Pool and Figure at the Door of a Cottage' Great Britain About 1781

Memory Maps

Memory Maps is a new website, designed to inspire and foster work which will continue this approach. It begins as a joint venture between the Dept of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex and the website team of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It includes works in many different media, posted here to stimulate ways of thinking, writing, recording and inventing: for example, a Tattooist parlour, Southend; Old Grand Theatre, Colchester; abandoned Merry Go Round ; portrait of Francis Bacon, East India Company coffee pot; child’s sampler, etc. )
Many of the images come from the archive of Recording Britain, which Kenneth Clark commissioned during World War Two, and is kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

‘You Silently: Image-Object-Text’

‘You Silently: Image-Object-Text’ at University of Essex, 14 January - 16 February 2008
‘You Silently (Two) : Image-Object-Text’ at The Courtauld Library, June 2008

Exhibition curated by Marina Warner and Dawn Ades for University of Essex and The Courtauld Library with a focus on visual poetry in the age of the internet.

Only Make Believe - Ways of Playing

Only Make Believe - Ways of Playing 25 March - 5 June 2005
Compton Verney Exhibitions

Only Make-Believe explores the innate relationship between play, make-believe and art, through the work of over thirty modern and contemporary artists. The link between play and creativity deepened during the twentieth-century and the exhibition focuses on the important historical, social, psychological and cultural aspects of this subject. Curated by Marina Warner.

Memory Maps

Memory Maps, a collaboration between the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, Essex University and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. A website of words and images to inspire students and support the teaching of creative writing. Please see here

Eyes, Lies and Illusions

Eyes, Lies and Illusions (curatorial advisor), Hayward Gallery, London, October 7 2004 - Jan 3 2005
This exhibition combined more than a thousand instruments, images and devices drawn from the remarkable collection of the German experimental film-maker Werner Nekes with major works by internationally renowned contemporary artists (including Christian Boltanski, Tony Oursler, Marcel Duchamp, Carsten Höller, Markus Raetz, Alfons Schilling, Anthony McCall and Ludwig Wilding) showing how optical phenomena continue to fascinate to this day. Please see here.

Metamorphing: Transformation in science, art and mythology

Metamorphing: Transformation in science, art and mythology. Co-curator: Sarah Bakewell. A Wellcome Trust Exhibition for the Science Museum London, 16 Sept 2002 - 16 Feb 2003. Conference, Metamorphing, 12 Feb. 2003 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

AICA (Association Internationale de Critiques d’Art)

Elected member of the AICA (Association Internationale de Critiques d’Art), 2009.

The Inner Eye

exhibition for Hayward Touring Exhibitions (Manchester City Art Galleries, Brighton Museum, Swansea Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery), 1996-1997

Agents

(UK)
Gill Coleridge
Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd.
20 Powis Mews
London
W11 1JN

Telephone: 020 7221 3717
Fax: 020 7229 9084
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(USA)
Amanda Urban
International Creative Management
825 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10019

Telephone: +00 1 212-556-5600
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Photograph by Dan Welldon

About Marina Warner

‘My critical and historical books and essays explore different figures in myth and fairy tale and the art and literature they have inspired, from my early studies of the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc to more recent work on the Arabian Nights. My fiction runs parallel to this, as I often draw on mythic or other imaginary predecessors to translate them into contemporary significance to re-vision them. Stories come from the past but speak to the present (if you taste the dragon’s blood and can hear what they say). I need to write stories as well as deconstruct and analyse them because I don’t want to damage the mysterious flight of imagination at the core of storytelling, the part that escapes what is called rational understanding. I hope, I believe that literature can be ‘strong enough to help’, to borrow Seamus Heaney’s wonderful comment about poetry.’

Articles and interviews

Nicholas Tredell, Conversations with Critics (Manchester, l994)
Lisa Hopkins, ‘An interview with Marina Warner’ Sheffield Thursday No 4/5, Autumn 1994, 81-95.
Hopkins, Lisa, ‘Revisiting The Tempest: Marina Warner’s Indigo’, Sheffield Thursday, Summer 1995
Mary Condé, ‘Finding a Voice for Martha: Marina Warner’s “Mary Takes the Better Part” in Journal of the Short Story in English, no 22 Summer l994, Presses de l’Université d’Angers
Chantal Zabus, ’ Spinning a Yarn with Marina Warner’, in Kunapipi: Post Colonial Women’s Writing Vol XVI No. 1, l994, 519-529.
Richard Todd, ‘Marina Warner’, Post-war literatures in English, September 1995.
Richard Kearney, ed., States of Mind, Dialogues with contemporary thinkers on the European mind (Dublin, l995)
Richard Todd, Consuming Fictions The Booker Prize and Fiction in Britain Today (London, l996)
Laurence Coupe, Myth (London, 1997)
Tobias Doering, ‘Chains of Memory- English-Caribbean Cross-Currents in Marina Warner’s Indigo and David Dabydeen’s “Turner”, in Across the Lines Intertextuality and Transcultural Communications in the New Literatures in English. Ed. Wolfgang Klooss. Cross/Cultures 32 ASNEL Papers 3. l998.
Kari Boyd McBride, ‘Marina Warner’, British Novelists since l960, ed. Merritt Moseley (Columbia, South Carolina, l999)
Steven Connor, The English Novel in History 1950-1995. London, l996, pp. 186-198.
Laurence Coupe,’The Comedy of Terrors: Reading Myth with Marina Warner’, PN Review 128: 52-55.
See entries in The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English , ed. Lorna Sage (Cambridge, l999).
See entry in David Macey, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (London, 2000)
Jane Aikins Haslett, Marina Warner: Feminist Mythographer (Ph.D.Thesis Edmonton, Alberta, 2001)
C. Zabus, “The Power of the Blue-Eyed Hag”, in H. Jelinek et al. (eds.), A Talent(ed) Dig-ger, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1996
E. Kilian, “Visitations from the Past: The Fiction of Marina Warner”, in H. von Irmgard Maassen et al. (eds.), Anglistik & Englischunterricht, (Sub) Versions of Realism - Re-cent Women’s Fiction in Britain, Heidelberg, Universitatsverlag C., Winter, 1997
M. Roberts, “On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers: From the Beast to the Blonde”, in M. Roberts, Food, Sex and God on Inspiration and Writing, London, Virago, 1998
C. Cakebread, “Sycorax Speaks: Marina Warner’s Indigo and The Tempest”, in M. Novy (ed.), Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women’s Re-Visions in Literature and Performance, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999
S. Sellers, “Bodies of Power: Beauty Myths in Tales by Marina Warner, Emma Donoghue, Sheri Tepper and Alice Thompson”, in S. Sellers, Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001
E. Federici, “Weaving Identities: M. Warner’s Rewriting of Western Traditions”, Englishes, n. 21, 2003
A. Atilla, “Regaining the Lost Memory in Marina Warner’s Indigo: Or Mapping the Waters: A Rewriting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest”, Interactions, vol. 13.2, EGE University, 2004
R. Irving, “On Ghosts and Ground Plants, Nanoverses and The Leto Bundle- A Conversation with Marina Warner”, 2001
C. Zabus, Tempests after Shakespeare, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002

Books On Marina Warner’s work

Laurence Coupe, Marina Warner (in series Writers and Their Work, ed. Isobel Armstrong, London: British Council), 2006.
Corona, Daniela. “C’Era due voltex” La narrativa realistica di Marina Warner (Palermo, 2002)
Babos, Daniela. Postmodern Issues in Marina Warner’s Indigo and The Lost Father, Cluj-Napoca (Rumania), 2002
Sanda Berce and Monika Varga, /Intertextuality As a Form of Virtual Reality/ (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia, 2002)

Honorary Degrees

Hon. Dr., University of Leicester (to be conferred June 2006)
Hon. D.Litt., University of Kent, 2005
Hon. Dr., Royal College of Art, 2004
Hon. Dr., Tavistock Institute (University of East London), 1999
Hon D. Litt., University of St Andrew’s, 1998
Hon. Dr., University of North London, 1997
Hon D.Litt., University of York, 1997
Hon. Dr., Sheffield Hallam University, 1995
Hon. D. Litt., University of Exeter, 1995

Awards and Prizes

Awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List, 2008
Fellow of the British Academy, 2005
Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella di Solidareità, Italy, 2005
President of the Virgil Society, 2004
Vice-President, Institute of Greece, Rome, and Classical Studies, University of Bristol, 2004
Aby Warburg Prize, 2004
President of the Virgil Society, 2004
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France, 2000
Honorary Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 2000
Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, British Academy, 2000
Katharine Briggs Memorial Prize, 1999
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award, 1996
Harvey Darton Prize, 1996
Honorary Fellow, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1994
Commonwealth Writer’s Prize (Eurasia), 1989
PEN Silver Pen Award, 1988
Booker Prize Short List, 1988
Fawcett Prize, 1986
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1985
Daily Express Award, 1972
Young Writer of the Year (Daily Telegraph Award), 1971
Runner Up: W.H. Smith Children’s Poetry Prize, 1964

Single lectures

Marina Warner has given many other lectures and seminars and participated in conferences in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia and the United States, in universities and institutes including, for example, the Getty Museum, the National Gallery London, Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Andrew’s.
Lectured for the British Council, in Japan, the University of the West Indies (Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia), Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and the Ukraine.
Readings, panel discussions, and debates at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, The Purcell Room, London, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Edinburgh Books Festival, et al.

Alan Marre Maccabaeus Lecture: ‘Stranger Magic: The Psychic Geography of Darkness’, University College London, 2005
Carpenter Lecturer, Institute of the Visual Arts, Harvard University, 2003
The Perrot-Warrick Lecture at Trinity, 1998
John Coffin Lecture, University of London, 1997

Posts Held

Professor, Dept. of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex (2004- ).
Visiting Fellow, The Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York, 2003.
Visiting Professor, Université de Paris XIII, Spring, 2003.
Visiting Fellow, The Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York, 2003.
Visiting Professor, Dept of English, St Andrew’s University, Scotland 2000-
Visiting Professor, Dept of Visual Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, 1999 –2004.
Visiting Professor, Stanford University, 2000.
Visiting Fellow, All Souls College. Oxford, 2001.
Visiting Fellow Commoner, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1998.
Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, Warwick, 1999.
Visiting Mellon Professor in the History of Art, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Fall 1997.
Whitney J. Oates Short-Term Fellow, Council of the Humanities, Princeton, Fall 1996.
Visiting Writer, Banff Centre for the Arts, Summer 1996.
Visiting Lecturer (to the late Edward Said’s Center for the Humanities), Columbia University, 1996.
Visiting Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Ulster, 1994-5.
Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing, Dept of English, University of Reading, 1993.
Visiting Fellow of the British Film Institute, 1993.
Tinbergen Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 1991.
Getty Scholar at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1987-8.

Invited Lectures

Robb Lecturer, University of Auckland, 2004
Clarendon Lecturer, Oxford, 2001
Tanner Lecturer, Yale University, 1999
BBC Radio 4 Reith Lecturer: ‘Managing Monsters’, 1994

MW at BBC Radio 4 with Adjoa Andoh, Anthony Calf and Eloise Secker recording From Fact to Fiction, June 2010

Diary

Please also see Curriculum Vitae here.

2012

March 19th, 2012, ‘The Library in Fiction’, a King James Library Lecture at University of St Andrews, Fife - as part of ‘The Meaning of the Library’ series celebrating 400th anniversary of the re-founding of the King James Library, Fife.

2011

2010

‘The Transatlantic Cable’ an essay for Parkett, Volume No.87 published in October 2010, pages 22-25 and translated into German on pages 26-31.

‘Algebra, Vertigo, and Order: The Signs in the Stone’, essay on Sigmar Polke’s new windows for Grossmunster, Zurich. Forthcoming, Parkettverlag, 2010.

July 5th-8th, British Comparative Literature Association ‘Archive’ Conference.

July 17th at 3pm, ‘The Return of the Fairytale - In She-Wolf’s Clothing’ - Marina Warner explores Fairytales’ Marina Warner will explore the surprising character of fairytale - and its protagonists - after Angela Carter at The Frome Festival, Somerset.

June 24th, Royal Institute of British Architects Council Dinner talk at RIBA, London

June 19th at 7.00pm BBC Radio 4 From Fact to Fiction: short story ‘Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant’ - They Make a Desert and Call It Peace´ - written by MW for BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘From Fact to Fiction’ will be broadcast on Saturday June 19 at 7.00pm and again Sunday June 20 at 5.40 pm.
June 16th-18th, ‘Empire and Me: Personal Explorations of Imperialism in Reality and Imagination’ A conference at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor.

June 8th at 6pm, Room 102 - University of London, Senate House. Marina Warner President - Elect of the British Comparative Literature Association, will be introducing the 20th volume in the /Legenda/ series: ‘Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles’ by Patrícia Silva McNeill. See here.

June 11th-12th - ‘Staging the East: Oriental Masking in the British Theatre 1660-1830’, Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, British Academy sponsored conference, convened by MW and Elizabeth Kuti.

May 2010, ‘A Source of Inspiration… As Seen by Marina Warner’ essay for The Fitzwilliam Museum, ongoing online exhibition.
May 2010, ‘Chronicle of a Life Repiared’ An essay for the exhibition catalogue ‘Bobby Baker Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me’ published by Profile Books, May 2010. Pages 2-17.

May 2010, ‘La Cella di Brigit’ edited by Daniela Corona, introduction and translation by Valentina Castagna, (Quattrosoli, Palermo, 2010). Italian version of the short story ‘Birgitta’s Cell’ first broadcast on 14th January 2007 on BBC Radio 4.

27 May 2010, ‘A View of a View’ and essay review on ‘Melchior Lorck’ edited by Erik Fischer, Ernst Jonas Bencard and Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen published in London Review of Books Vol. 32 No. 10 27 May 2010  Pp 15-17.

May 20th ‘Looking East: The Orientalism of Melchior Lorck’, Birkbeck Graduate Seminar, MW lecture at Birkbeck College, 7.30pm.

May 17th at 6:30pm, ‘Oriental Masquerade: Fiction and Fantasy in the Wake of The Arabian Nights’, Edward Said Lecture at The British Museum. Marina Warner, University of Essex, gives the first annual Edward W Said London lecture, with opening remarks by Stuart Hall and an introduction by Jacqueline Rose. In l999, Edward Said founded, with Daniel Barenboim, The West-East Divan Orchestra, bringing young musicians from the Arab world and Israel to play together. The orchestra is named after a cycle of poems by the German Romantic poet Goethe, who was inspired to a late burst of remarkable creativity by his encounter with eastern literature, first with the drinking songs and love lyrics of the medieval Persian poet Hafiz, and soon afterwards with the Arabian Nights in the first full German translation. In Mozart’s opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, the subject of an essay in Edward Said’s last book, /On Late Style/, the lovers masquerade as orientals (‘Albanians’) to test their fiancées. For Mozart and Goethe, truth-telling and Arabian fantasy were in some way intertwined. How this could be, the forms the device took, and the effects it had, will be explored by Marina Warner in the light of Edward Said’s evolving ideas on ‘the Orient-as-cause’, entangled cultures, contrapuntal reading, and belatedness.

May 13th at 5pm, ‘War & Pity’ Wolfson Lecture Series, Wolfson College, Oxford
The matter of Troy offers a lens to look at war in our time: The Trojan Women and Hecuba have been re-visioned in different translations and productions with a strong contemporary emphasis on Euripides’ uses of pity and terror, the principles of Aristoteleian catharsis. Marina Warner will explore the changing character of the cathartic principle in the post-photographic era of global technologies. Do such scenes and images still inspire a purifying pity?

May 2010 “Siren Voices’ an extract from ‘From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and their Tellers’ in programme for Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák (1901) at Opera North, Leeds. Pp 6-9.

May 2010, ‘Imaginig the Orient’ an essay for the John Johnson Collection, An Archive of Printed Ephemera’ online section ‘A Writer Responds’.

‘From the Archives of the Marciana: Ms Miniscule 1588:15.08’ in the artists book ‘Helen Douglas: Venetian Brocade’ to be published by We Productions, 2010

1st May 2010, ‘An Afternoon with Derek Walcott’ - Professor of Poetry, University of Essex, Lakeside Theatre, public reading at 3pm.
Derek Walcott: In conversation with Professor Marina Warner and Maria Cristina Fumagalli of the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, discussing his life and work. Including readings from his works.

‘The Rowan Tree Ark: Alistair Noble’s ‘Mapping Arcadia: Isle Martin and the Topography of Place’ forthcoming essay, 2010.

April 12th, In conversation with Philip Pullman for publication of his new book, ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’, Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre.

April 8th, ‘Alberto Manguel: Reading the Universe’ chaired by Marina Warner at The Royal Society of Literature, listen to the event here.

March 30th ‘Dark Arts: Magic and Strangers after The Arabian Nights’, Annual George Steiner Lecture in Comparative Literature - School of Languages Linguistics and Film Annual Lecture at Queen Mary University, London, 6:30pm.
March 27th, ‘Rapunzel’s Mothers: Love & Fear in the Fairytale’, lecture at The IAFP’s 19th International Conference: “Tales of Transgression - Narratives in Forensic Psychotherapy” at Keble College, Oxford.

MW contributed programme notes for the Rough Magic Theatre Company production, ‘Sodome, My Love’, March 2010.

March 2nd ‘The Bookshop in Cairo’: A Talk to the Friends of The British Library at the AGM.

February, ‘Fathers, Daughters and Folklore’, programme note for King Lear, RSC Stratford-on-Avon, Spring 2010.

February 14th, Channel 4 ‘The Bible: A History’ interviewed for Episode 4 ‘The Daughters of Eve’. See also ‘Film, Television & Radio’.

February 13th, LSE Literary Festival - ‘Animating a Myth for our times: The Lawsuit of the Animals against Humanity’. An event that combines a story-telling of the 1000-year-old eco-fable The Animals’ Lawsuit against Humanity with a panel discussion on the story’s historical and literary origins; current biodiversity in the midst of species extinction; the philosophical relationship between humans; and animals and the need for a myth for our times. Listen to the podcast Here

Saturday 9 January 2010 ‘Do the tales of the Arabian Nights have resonance for audiences today?’ An essay review on the RSC’s production of Arabian Nights for The Guardian Review Section, P. 18. Stranger Magic: Charmed States in the Wake of the Arabian Nights - work in progress

2009

November 16th, 2009 MW gave a reading from her new novel ‘Inventory of a Life Mislaid’ at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Paris.

‘Baba Yaga and Other Hags’: review of Dubravka Ugresic’s latest novel published in London Review of Books on 27 August 2009.

‘Rat and Bear: The Animal Fables of Fischli / Weiss’ in ‘Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Are Animals People?’ Exhibition catalogue for Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Madrid, in July 2009.

MW at BBC Radio 4 with Adjoa Andoh, Anthony Calf and Eloise Secker recording From Fact to Fiction, June 2010

In Progress

MW is currently working on a novel inspired by her father’s bookshop in Egypt in the Fifties - work in progress entitled ‘Inventory of a Life Mislaid’. She is also working on ‘Stranger Magic: Charmed States in the Wake of the Arabian Nights’. For related events please see the Diary here.

Recent Writings, Events, Talks

JULY 2010

MW has been elected President of the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) 2010-2013.

July 5th-8th, British Comparative Literature Association ‘Archive’ Conference.

JUNE
June 24th, Royal Institute of British Architects Council Dinner talk at RIBA, London. A copy of the speech is available to read here.

June 11th-12th - ‘Staging the East: Oriental Masking in the British Theatre 1660-1830’, Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, British Academy sponsored conference, convened by MW and Elizabeth Kuti.

MAY
May 2010, ‘A Source of Inspiration… As Seen by Marina Warner’ essay for The Fitzwilliam Museum, ongoing online exhibition.
May 2010, ‘Chronicle of a Life Repiared’ An essay for the exhibition catalogue ‘Bobby Baker Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me’ published by Profile Books, May 2010. Pages 2-17.

May 20th ‘Looking East: The Orientalism of Melchior Lorck’, Birkbeck Graduate Seminar, MW lecture at Birkbeck College, 7.30pm.

May 2010 “Siren Voices’ an extract from ‘From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and their Tellers’ in programme for Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák (1901) at Opera North, Leeds. Pp 6-9.

May 2010, ‘Imaginig the Orient’ an essay for the John Johnson Collection, An Archive of Printed Ephemera’ online section ‘A Writer Responds’.

‘From the Archives of the Marciana: Ms Miniscule 1588:15.08’ in the artists book ‘Helen Douglas: Venetian Brocade’ to be published by We Productions, 2010

WH Smith and Son, Cairo, 1948 - MW's father's bookshop

Inventory of a Life Mislaid - work in progress

MW is working on a novel inspired by her father’s bookshop in Egypt in the Fifties.

March 2nd ‘The Bookshop in Cairo’: A Talk to the Friends of The British Library at the AGM.

November 16th, 2009 MW gave a reading from her new novel ‘Inventory of a Life Mislaid’ at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Paris.

Other Fictions

‘La Cella di Brigit’ edited by Daniela Corona, introduction and translation by Valentina Castagna, (Quattrosoli, Palermo, 2010). Italian version of the short story ‘Birgitta’s Cell’ first broadcast on 14th January 2007 on BBC Radio 4.