''Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949'' (1994) was the first volume of

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...

's autobiography, covering the period of her life from birth in 1919 to leaving

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kn ...

(now

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

) in 1949. Although Lessing describes her fiction as not autobiographical, in this volume she makes explicit comparisons between herself and the leading character, Martha Quest, of the

Children of Violence The Children of Violence is a sequence of five semi-autobiographical novels by British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing: ''Martha Quest'' (1952), ''A Proper Marriage'' (1954), ''A Ripple from the Storm'' (1958), '' Landlocked'' (196 ...

series. The second volume of Lessing's autobiography appeared in 1997: ''Walking in the Shade: Volume II of my Autobiography (1949–1962)''.

References

1994 non-fiction books Literary autobiographies Works by Doris Lessing HarperCollins books {{lit-bio-book-stub