British novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature for a body of work that delved into human relations and inspired a generation of feminist writers.

British novelist Doris Lessing poses as she arrives to receive the Prince of Asturias Award for literature in Oviedo, capital of the Principality of Asturias, in this October 25, 2001 file picture. Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature, the Swedish Academy said on October 11, 2007.

Lessing, the oldest Nobel literature laureate since the prizes began in 1901, was the 34th woman Nobellist and the 11th female to take the literature award. Lessing debuted as a novelist with "The Grass is Singing" in 1950, a book that examined the relationship between a white farmer's wife and her black servant.Her 1962 work "The Golden Notebook" was widely considered her breakthrough. "The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th century view of the male-female relationship," the academy said in its citation.

Lessing was born to British parents in what was then Persia, now Iran. Her family moved to Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in 1925. She ended her formal schooling at 14. This was the fourth of this year's crop of Nobel prizes, handed out annually for achievements in science, literature, economics and peace.