Early work
Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first published short story was "An die Musik", in 1961; both were set in her fictional country of Orsinia.[40][41] Between 1951 and 1961 she also wrote five novels, all set in Orsinia, which were rejected by publishers on the grounds that they were inaccessible. Some of her poetry from this period was published in 1975 in the volume Wild Angels.[42] Le Guin turned her attention to science fiction after a lengthy period of receiving rejections from publishers, knowing that there was a market for writing that could be readily classified as such.[43] Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962 in Fantastic Science Fiction,[44] and seven other stories followed in the next few years, in Fantastic or Amazing Stories.[45] Among them were "The Dowry of Angyar", which introduced the fictional Hainish universe,[46] and "The Rule of Names" and "The Word of Unbinding", which introduced the world of Earthsea.[47] These stories were largely ignored by critics.[43]
Ace Books released Rocannon's World, Le Guin's first published novel, in 1966. Two more Hainish novels, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions were published in 1966 and 1967, respectively, and the three books together would come to be known as the Hainish trilogy.[48] The first two were each published as half of an "Ace Double": two novels bound into a paperback and sold as a single low-cost volume.[48] City of Illusions was published as a standalone volume, indicating Le Guin's growing name recognition. These books received more critical attention than Le Guin's short stories, with reviews being published in several science fiction magazines, but the critical response was still muted.[48] The books contained many themes and ideas also present in Le Guin's better known later works, including the "archetypal journey" of a protagonist who undertakes both a physical journey and one of self-discovery, cultural contact and communication, the search for identity, and the reconciliation of opposing forces.[49]
When publishing her story "Nine Lives" in 1968, Playboy magazine asked Le Guin whether they could run the story without her full first name, to which Le Guin agreed: the story was published under the name "U. K. Le Guin". She later wrote that it was the first and only time she had experienced prejudice against her as a woman writer from an editor or publisher, and reflected that "it seemed so silly, so grotesque, that I failed to see that it was also important." In subsequent printings, the story was published under her full name.[50]
Critical attention
Le Guin's next two books brought her sudden and widespread critical acclaim. A Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, was a fantasy novel written initially for teenagers.[4] Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults, but was asked to write a novel targeted at this group by the editor of Parnassus Press, who saw it as a market with great potential.[51][52] A coming of age story set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, the book received a positive reception in both the U.S. and Britain.[51][53]
Le Guin with Harlan Ellison at Westercon in Portland, Oregon (1984)Her next novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, was a Hainish universe story exploring themes of gender and sexuality on a fictional planet where humans have no fixed sex.[54] The book was Le Guin's first to address feminist issues,[55] and according to scholar Donna White, it "stunned the science fiction critics"; it won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for best novel, making Le Guin the first woman to win these awards, and a number of other accolades.[56][57] A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness have been described by critic Harold Bloom as Le Guin's masterpieces.[4] She won the Hugo Award again in 1973 for The Word for World is Forest.[58] The book was influenced by Le Guin's anger over the Vietnam War, and explored themes of colonialism and militarism:[59][60] Le Guin later described it as the "most overt political statement" she had made in a fictional work.[58]
Le Guin continued to develop themes of equilibrium and coming-of-age in the next two installments of the Earthsea series, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore, published in 1971 and 1972, respectively.[61] Both books were praised for their writing, while the exploration of death as a theme in The Farthest Shore also drew praise.[62] Her 1974 novel The Dispossessed again won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best novel, making her the first person to win both awards for each of two books.[63] Also set in the Hainish universe, the story explored anarchism and utopianism. Scholar Charlotte Spivack described it as representing a shift in Le Guin's science fiction towards discussing political ideas.[64][65] Several of her speculative fiction short stories from the period, including her first published story, were later anthologized in the 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.[66][67] The fiction of the period 1966 to 1974, which also included The Lathe of Heaven, the Hugo Award-winning "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and the Nebula Award-winning "The Day Before the Revolution",[68] constitutes Le Guin's best-known body of work.[69]
Wider exploration
Le Guin published a variety of work in the second half of the 1970s. This included speculative fiction in the form of the novel The Eye of the Heron, which, according to Le Guin, may be a part of the Hainish universe.[41][70][71] She also published Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, a realistic novel for adolescents,[72] as well as the collection Orsinian Tales and the novel Malafrena in 1976 and 1979, respectively. Though the latter two were set in the fictional country of Orsinia, the stories were realistic fiction rather than fantasy or science fiction.[73] The Language of the Night, a collection of essays, was released in 1979,[74] and Le Guin also published Wild Angels, a volume of poetry, in 1975.[75]
Between 1979, when she published Malafrena, and 1994, when the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea was released, Le Guin wrote primarily for a younger audience.[76] In 1985 she published the experimental work Always Coming Home.[77] She wrote 11 children's picture books, including the Catwings series, between 1979 and 1994, along with The Beginning Place, an adolescent fantasy novel, released in 1980.[35][76][78] Four more poetry collections were also published in this period, all of which were positively received.[75][76] She also revisited Earthsea, publishing Tehanu in 1990: coming eighteen years after The Farthest Shore, during which Le Guin's views had developed considerably, the book was grimmer in tone than the earlier works in the series, and challenged some ideas presented therein. It received critical praise,[79] won Le Guin a third Nebula Award for Best Novel,[80] and led to the series being recognized among adult literature.[81]
Later writings
Le Guin returned to the Hainish Cycle in the 1990s after a lengthy hiatus with the publication of a series of short stories, beginning with "The Shobies' Story" in 1990.[82] These stories included "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995), which explored growing into adulthood and was set on the same planet as The Left Hand of Darkness.[83] It was described by scholar Sandra Lindow as "so transgressively sexual and so morally courageous" that Le Guin "could not have written it in the '60s".[82] In the same year she published the story suite Four Ways to Forgiveness, and followed it up with "Old Music and the Slave Women", a fifth, connected, story in 1999. All five of the stories explored freedom and rebellion within a slave society.[84] In 2000 she published The Telling, which would be her final Hainish novel, and the next year released Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind, the last two Earthsea books.[41][85] The latter won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2002.[86]
From 2002 onwards several collections and anthologies of Le Guin's work were published. A series of her stories from the period 1994–2002 was released in 2002 in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, along with the novella Paradises Lost.[87] The volume examined unconventional ideas about gender, as well as anarchist themes.[88][89][90] Other collections included Changing Planes, also released in 2002, while the anthologies included The Unreal and the Real (2012),[41] and The Hainish Novels and Stories, a two-volume set of works from the Hainish universe released by the Library of America.[91]
Other works from this period included Lavinia (2008), based on a character from Virgil's Aeneid,[92] and the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, consisting of Gifts (2004), Voices (2006), and Powers (2007).[93] Although Annals of the Western Shore was written for an adolescent audience, the third volume, Powers, received the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2009.[93][94] In her final years, Le Guin largely turned away from fiction, and produced a number of essays, poems, and some translation.[5] Her final publications included the non-fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, and the poetry volume So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014–2018, all of which were released after her death.[41][95][96]
