Doris Lessing - In Pursuit of the English

ISBN 978-0-06-053013-6 (paperback)

THE SWEETEST DREAM: A Novel

ISBN 978-0-06-093755-3 (paperback)

MARTHA QUEST

ISBN 978-0-06-095969-2 (paperback)

A PROPER MARRIAGE

ISBN 978-0-06-097663-7 (paperback)

A RIPPLE FROM THE STORM

ISBN 978-0-06-097664-4 (paperback)

LANDLOCKED

ISBN 978-0-06-097665-1 (paperback)

THE FOUR-GATED CITY

ISBN 978-0-06-097667-5 (paperback)

HARPER PERENNIAL

DORIS LESSINGwas born of British parents in Persia in 1919 and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books—novels, stories, reportage, poems and plays. Doris Lessing lives in London.

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“One of the most authentic books ever written about the English…. Funny, touching and so real that the smell and taste of London seem to rise from its pages.”

“Eloquent…. Wry and ribald…. [Lessing’s] impressive gifts for characterization and dialogue, her skill as a raconteur and her tartly humorous style combine to make In Pursuit of the English readable and amusing.”

“No other writer, from any continent, has this raceless, classless fellowship com bined with total physical receptiveness…. Mrs. Lessing has always been more than a regional moral messenger; she is a prospector into the minds, spirit and senses of all, imaginatively at home anywhere.”

“A magnificent book, quite staggering in its penetration of the ordinary working-class Londoner’s nature.”

The Grass Is Singing

The Golden Notebook

Briefing for a Descent into Hell

The Summer Before the Dark

The Memoirs of a Survivor

The Diaries of Jane Somers :

• The Diary of a Good Neighbor

• If the Old Could.

The Good Terrorist

The Fifth Child

Love. Again

Re: Colonized Planet 5. Shikasta

The Marriages Between Zones

Three. Four and Five

The Sirian Experiments

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

Martha Quest

A Proper Marriage

A Ripple From the Storm

Landlocked

The Four-Gated City

This Was the Old Chiefs Country

The Habit of Loving

A Man and Two Women

The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories

Stories

African Stories

The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

(Music by Philip Glass)

Fourteen Poems

Particularly Cats

Going Home

A Small Personal Voice

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

The Wind Blows Away Our Words

Particularly Cats… And Rufus

African Laughter

Under My Skin

The Doris Lessing Reader

This book was originally published in Great Britain by MacGibbon & Kee Ltd. in 1960. First U.S. edition was published by Simon & Schuster in 1961.

IN PURSUIT OF THE ENGLISH. Copyright © 1960 by Doris Lessing.

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EPub Edition © JULY 2010

ISBN: 978-0-062-03488-5

First HarperPerennial edition published 1996.

ISBN 0-06-097629-2

07 08 09 10 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

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