Shelagh Delaney

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Standard Name: Delaney, Shelagh
Birth Name: Shelagh Delaney
Used Form: Shelia
In the late 1950s Shelagh Delaney enjoyed a shortlived burst of success when her first play, A Taste of Honey, was produced by Joan Littlewood 's Theatre Workshop . She was then considered one of a number of playwrights producing kitchen-sink drama. After the commercial failure of her second play, The Lion in Love, she turned to writing scripts for film and television. She also produced a volume of short stories, Sweetly Sings the Donkey. Most of her writings are realistic representations of the lives of working-class people in the North of England.
Black-and-white portrait photo of Shelagh Delany in profile, standing in front of a mirror and lighting a cigar, 1950.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Leisure and Society Carola Oman
In a letter to the Times in 1962, CO described a bookcase in her writing-room which held the works she described as All the Winners. For a writer of fairly conservative views and strong...
Literary responses Angela Carter
Jenny Turner wrote that in this first novel AC felt compelled to cram all her likes, dislikes, and anxieties into a modish early 1960s novel of beatnik shenanigans in the heightened kitchen-sink mode of Shena Mackay
Textual Production Dodie Smith
DS found herself increasingly out of step with the new drama being produced in London since the advent of the Angry Young Men. She could tolerate John Osborne and even admired Shelagh Delaney ...
Textual Production Ann Jellicoe
Rita Tushingham , fresh from her debut in the film version of Shelagh Delaney 's A Taste of Honey, played the only female role. Two years later, in May 1964, The Knack was produced...
Textual Production Jennifer Johnston
She dedicated this book to her father , with 54 years of love and admiration.It became a Fontana paperback in 1992,
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
and was adapted for cinema in the same year by Shelagh Delaney .
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michelene Wandor
The work deals with theatre and sexual politics since 1968, with an emphasis on alternative theatre groups such as the Women's Theatre Group , Gay Sweatshop , and Monstrous Regiment . The original version considers...

Timeline

2 February 1953: Theatre Workshop (founded in 1945 in the...

Building item

2 February 1953

Theatre Workshop (founded in 1945 in the north of England) opened at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East (in the East End of London), under the direction of Joan Littlewood .
Theatre Royal, Stratford. http://www.stratfordeast.com/.
Ezard, John, and Michael Billington. “Obituary: Joan Littlewood”. Guardian Unlimited, 23 Sept. 2002.

Texts

Delaney, Shelagh. A Taste of Honey. Methuen, 1959.
Delaney, Shelagh. Sweetly Sings the Donkey. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1963.
Delaney, Shelagh. The Lion in Love. Methuen, 1961.