Abstract
Shelagh Delaney’s short story collection, Sweetly Sings the Donkey (1963), traces a semi-autobiographical journey through the writer’s childhood, her worldwide success with A Taste of Honey (1958), and the violent backlash she encountered as a result of it. In this chapter, the experimental qualities of the collection are explored including the key themes of celebrity, subject formation and urban alienation. Her use of deficient speech as a technique is analysed as well as her innovations in the use of found materials. It argues for a reconsideration of Delaney’s legacy; reading her as an early experimentalist rather than a late addition to the movement popularly labelled the “Angry Young Men”.
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Darlington, J. (2021). Shelagh Delaney’s Sweetly Sings the Donkey (1963) and Experimentalism After the Angry Young Men. In: Radford, A., Van Hove, H. (eds) British Experimental Women’s Fiction, 1945—1975 . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72766-6_8
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