PROFESSOR ELIZABETH WILSON: BRIEF CV
Educated: St Paul's Girls' School, London, St Anne's College, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science
Employment: Worked as psychiatric social worker for 10 years before leaving social work for higher education;
From 1987 to 2001 taught cultural studies at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University). Now working as an independent researcher and writer.
Books: Author of 12 books. These include:
Non fiction: Women and the Welfare State, Tavistock Publications, 1977.
Only Halfway to Paradise: Women in Postwar Britain 1945-1968 Tavistock Publications, 1980. Shortlisted for Fawcett Prize;
Mirror Writing, (autobiographical non-fiction), Virago, 1982.
Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity Virago Press and U. California Press, 1985; new edition imminent. Translated into German, Danish, Swedish and Portuguese;
Co-author with Lou Taylor, Through the Looking Glass BBC Press (tie-in with television series on fashion), 1989;
The Sphinx in the City, Virago Press and U. California Press, 1992.
Translated into German. Shortlisted for Manchester Oddfellows non fiction award;
Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, I.B. Tauris and Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Translated into Chinese.
Fiction: The Lost Time Café, Virago Press, 1993. Translated into German; chosen for Feminist Book Fortnight, 1993;
Poisoned Hearts, Virago Press, 1996.
The Twilight Hour Serpents Tail Press 2006
The Love that Kills, 2008, forthcoming.
Co-edited essay collections: Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader, with Juliet Ash, Pandora Press, 1992;
Pornography and Feminism: The Case Against Censorship, with Gillian Rogerson, Lawrence and Wishart, 1992;
Defining Dress, with Amy de la Haye, Manchester University Press, 1999;
Body Dressing, with Joanne Entwistle, Berg Publishers, 2001.
Has also written programme notes for both Covent Garden Opera House for Puccini's La Bohème and the English National Opera for Leoncavallo's La Bohème, and contributed an essay to the catalogue for Addressing the Century at the Hayward Gallery (1999) and to the catalogue for One Woman's Wardrobe at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Press and Broadcasting: Has written for the Guardian, London, the New Statesman and New Left Review as well as publishing about thirty academic articles.
Has appeared in several British television programmes on the arts and architecture;
Has broadcast many times for the BBC, on Woman's Hour and the arts programmes Start the Week, Kaleidoscope and Night Waves and on several one-off programmes (details available);
Appeared in a major Dutch television programme on feminism in 1983;
Has broadcast on American and Canadian radio;
Lectures and Visiting Lectureships: These are too numerous to detail in full. Examples are:
Parsons School of Design, New York, 1994, Lewis Mumford Memorial Lecture;
UCLA, 1994, UCLA Historical Association;
Pompidou Centre, Paris, 1994,
OECD High Level Conference, 'Women in the City', Paris, 1994,
KulturHuset, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Swire School of Design, 1995;
Stanford University, Ca., 1985, Visiting Professorship, Feminist Studies Programme;
Lecture tour, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Australia, 1990, Socialist Scholars Conference and associated events, 1990;
University of Chicago at Urbana Champaign, 2001,
University of Urbino, 2001.
University of Queensland, Brisbane and University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2003.
Related Activities: Member Executive Committee of Liberty (the National Council of Civil Liberties) 1990-1993
Member, Deutscher Prize Committee 1997 -
External Examiner on numerous under- and post-graduate courses from 1976 to date
Editorial Activities: Started writing for 'underground' papers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, ie., Frendz, Come Together and Red Rag.
Founder member of editorial group of Feminist Review 1979-1985
Member of editorial board of New Left Review 1990-1992
Review
Extracts:		 Adorned in Dreams: (L.A. Times): 'Wilson offers dramatically original ideas that make this a major work of anthropological scholarship and cultural criticism, sharply focused, consistently intelligent and broadly informative.': Angela Carter (London Review of Books): 'Her book is the best I have read on the subject, bar none …In her haunting fragment of autobiography, Mirror Writing, [she] presented herself as always strikingly dressed …[and] discussed dandyism and style informally … Adorned in Dreams continues and considerably extends this discussion. She succeeds so well in this project that one only becomes asware of its ambitiousness as she starts pulling together the threads of her main argument.'
Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts: Sheila Rowbotham (Financial Times): 'Her intellectual enthusiasm, ironic humour and delight in bohemian absurdity make this a fascinating book to read.': Francis King (Spectator): 'Elizabeth Wilson, who has done a prodigious amount of research, is particularly good on the slumming or her aristocratic and/or wealth bohemians … When everyone is a Bohemian, then, paradoxically, the country of Bohemia ceases to exist. Of this country Elizabeth Wison has produced a fascinating history.': Sally Cline (Literary Review): 'Wilson leads the search party … for the bona fide … bohemians with fantastic energy … in a book that is intricately informative, expertly researched and highly entertaining. She tells a good story.': Thomas Hodgkinson (Independent on Sunday): 'It is really the best kind of book: a scholarly exploration of a fascinating subject.'
The Sphinx in the City: Jennifer Bloomer, (JSAH): 'The construction in itself is dazzling, but the critique that it launches is compelling and persuasive.': Mabel Berezin, (American Journal of Sociology): 'Reading this book is as much of an experience as wandering through the urban venues that it describes … Wilson is provocative and fun to read.'
The Twilight Hour: 'The writing is good and the scene setting fascinating (Literary Review), 'a well crafted, atmospheric and subtly feminist murder mystery … both pacy and packet with incident Bob Cornwell, (Tangled Web); 'A quirky whodunnit that will send shivers down your spine and a gripping evocation of an icy time (Zoe Fairbairns, Independent); 'an elegantly nostalgic, noir thriller; brilliantly conjures up the rackety confusion of Cold War London' (Daily Mail); 'an atmospheric book in which foggy, half-ruined London is as much a character as the artists and good-time girls who wander through its pages. It would be selfish to hope for more thrillers from Wilson, who has other fish to fry, but The Twilight Hour is so good that such selfishness is inevitable' Roz Kaveney, (Time Out).