Lessing, who will be 88 on October 22, is only the 11th woman to have won the prize since it was first awarded in 1901.
Lessing, whose work has covered a multitude of topics, has over the years been mentioned as a possible Nobel laureate but she was not seen as among the frontrunners this year.
Although "The Golden Notebook", her best known work, established her as a feminist icon back in 1962, she has consistently refused the label and says her writing does not play a directly political role.
She and her work were considered pioneers in the feminist movement.
Born Doris May Taylor in Khermanshah, in what is now Iran, on October 22, 1919, Lessing spent her formative years on a farm in Southern Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe, where her British parents moved in 1927.
In recent years Lessing, who lives in the London suburb of Hampstead, has also written several works of science fiction.
She is also probably one of the oldest people anywhere to have her own page on the popular social networking web site MySpace.
On a recent visit the site announced, under the label "Female - 87 years old," that "Doris Lessing has 136 friends."
Last year, the Nobel Literature Prize went to Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.
Lessing has won a number of awards and prizes, including the Prix Medicis in 1976 and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1995, and is one of the oldest people to win a Nobel.
She will receive a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million Swedish kronor (1.53 million dollars, 1.08 million euros) from the hands of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel prizes.
The Nobel peace prize will be announced on Friday.
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