Three of Shelagh Delaney’s screenplays have become successful films: A Taste of Honey (1961, with Tony Richardson), based on her stage play of the same title; Charlie Bubbles (1968), based on one of her short stories; and Dance with a Stranger (1985), based on a celebrated murder case and trial in the mid-1950’s. Two other screenplays were not as successful: The White Bus (1966), from a Delaney short story, filmed but never released, and The Raging Moon (1970). Delaney has done several teleplays, including St. Martin’s Summer (1974), Did Your Nanny Come from Bergen? (1970), and Find Me First (1979). She has one television series to her credit, The House That Jack Built (1977), adapted for stage performance in New York in 1979. She has also written two radio plays, So Does the Nightingale (1980) and Don’t Worry About Matilda (1983), which was very favorably reviewed. In 1963, a collection of semiautobiographical short stories appeared: Sweetly Sings the Donkey. A number of her essays appeared in the 1960’s in The New York Times Magazine and Cosmopolitan.

Shelagh Delaney is highly regarded for her ability to create working-class characters and to express the difficulties of their lives in industrial northern England. She is a playwright of a particular region and social class. Both A Taste of Honey (which won the New York Drama Critics citation as best foreign play of 1961) and The Lion in Love employ such settings and characters. Her focus on the domestic tensions in the lives of working-class families is especially sympathetic to women, though never sentimental. Delaney’s early work for the stage and her later television, film, and radio plays seem to revolve around the dreams and frustrations of women in contemporary society. While she was at first mistaken as an “Angry Young Woman,” her focus has generally not been on large social issues but on individuals confronting their economic and social limitations and dealing with their illusions. A Taste of Honey, The Lion in Love, and several of her works in other media study characters who belong to families yet who are isolated even from those closest to them. That her characters face their difficulties with humor and wit sets her apart from many of her contemporaries, such as John Osborne.