Doris Lessing was born in Persia to British parents, her father a banker for the Imperial Bank, her mother a nurse. When she was six, her family moved to the African colony Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Her family struggled there; Lessing had many pleasant memories of playing with her brother, but her father couldn't earn the money he thought he could from farming, and her mother wanted her to have a proper Edwardian upbringing that did not appeal to her daughter. Doris left school at thirteen, but remained a fierce reader and became an autodidact. She left home at fifteen to become a nursemaid, and began writing during that time. She moved to Rhodesia's capital (called Salisbury at...
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