Shelagh Delaney was born November 25, 1939, in Salford, Lancashire, England. Her father, a bus inspector, and her mother were part of the English working class, the social group that informs of her writing. Delaney attended Broughton Secondary School but began writing even before she completed her education. She had no further interest in formal education, and after she left school, she held a number of jobs, including salesgirl, usherette, and clerk.
A Taste of Honey was produced when Delaney was eighteen-years-old. Although this play was originally being written as a novel, it was rewritten as a play in response to Delaney’s dissatisfaction with contemporary theatre. Delaney felt that she could write a better play, with more realistic dialogue, than the plays that were currently being staged. A Taste of Honey became an unexpected hit, winning several awards both as a play and later as a film. Delaney followed with another play, The Lion in Love, two years later (1960). She did not write another play for nearly twenty years.
Instead, Delaney focused on short stories, Sweetly Sings the Donkey (1963); screenplays, Charlie Bubbles (1968) and The Raging Moon (1970); and television plays, Did Your Nanny Come from Bergen? (1970), St. Martin’s Summer (1974), and Find Me First (1979). In 1979, Delaney again wrote for the theatre when she adapted The House That Jack Built, a BBC television script she had written in 1977. Delaney followed this stage work with two radio plays, So Does the Nightingale (1980) and Don’t Worry about Matilda (1981). After another television play, Rape (1981), Delaney was asked to write a screenplay based on the true story of a women who was executed for murder. This work became the film Dance with a Stranger (1985). Delaney has also contributed articles for the New York Times Magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Evergreen Review.
Delaney’s first play proved a difficult act to follow, and none of her subsequent work received the same critical acclaim that greeted A Taste of Honey, although her collection of short, autobiographical stories, Sweetly Sings the Donkey, was considered a critical success. Delaney believes in social protest and has not been afraid to speak out on the need for a more realistic theatre, one that depicts the working class environment of many British citizens. Delaney lives in London, where she was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985.
Source: Drama for Students, ©2012 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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