The Baby on the Fire Escape

Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

Julie Phillips

$31.95

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

WW Norton & Co
22 June 2023

Science: general issues

"What does a great artist who is also a mother look like? What does it mean to create, not in ""a room of one's own,"" but in a domestic space? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.

With fierce empathy, Phillips evokes the intimate and varied struggles of brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Ursula K. Le Guin found productive stability in family life, and Audre Lorde's queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms. Susan Sontag became a mother at nineteen, Angela Carter at forty-three. These mothers had one child, or five, or seven. They worked in a studio, in the kitchen, in the car, on the bed, at a desk, with a baby carrier beside them. They faced judgement for pursuing their creative work-Doris Lessing was said to have abandoned her children, and Alice Neel's in-laws falsely claimed that she once, to finish a painting, left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment.

As she threads together vivid portraits of these pathbreaking women, Phillips argues that creative motherhood is a question of keeping the baby on that apocryphal fire escape: work and care held in a constantly renegotiated, provisional, productive tension. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary life."

By: Julie Phillips
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 211mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 248g
ISBN: 9781324064435
ISBN 10: 1324064439
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 22 June 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Julie Phillips is the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. The recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction grant, she lives in Amsterdam with her partner and their two children.

Reviews for The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

For Phillips, the lives she wants to depict are not accounts of maternal self-sacrifice and denial, but instead, narratives that portray the mother as a hero. -- Frieda Klotz - Sunday Independent The Baby on the Fire Escape looks at the extreme ways some female artists have overcome the restraints of parenthood... The book's strength lies in Phillips's nimble talents as a portraitist. -- Lucy Scholes - The Sunday Telegraph Does motherhood prevent women from having an active creative life, or enhance it? Do babies need to be out of mind as well as out of sight for creative work to be done? [...] Julie Phillips has written a spirited and thoughtful account of a handful of figures from mid-20th-century Britain and America who have grappled with these dilemmas. -- Lara Feigel - RA Magazine The opening section on Alice Neel is a searing account of the complexities of balancing (or not) being a mother and an artist-and the often heavy price women pay... [The Baby on the Fire Escape] explores the difficult issues around the subject with no judgment and or neat conclusions-and is all the richer for it. -- Jose da Silva - The Art Newspaper A brilliant, vital text -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, author of The Year of the Cat