Margaret Drabble (b.1939) is a British novelist, biographer, and essayist. Her early novels are skillful portrayals on the theme of a girl’s development toward maturity through her experiences of love, marriage, and motherhood. Her later novels have a documentary approach to social change. Drabble is the younger sister of the British scholar A. S. Byatt; their sibling rivalry is long-standing and renowned.
Born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, Drabble was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She acted for a short time and then turned to write. Frequently mirroring her own life, her novels concentrate on the concerns of intelligent, often frustrated middle-class women. Her notable titles include A Summer Bird-Cage (1963,) The Garrick Year (1964,) The Millstone (1965,) Jerusalem the Golden (1967; James Tait Black Memorial Prize,) The Needle’s Eye (1972,) The Middle Ground (1980,) and the trilogy comprising The Radiant Way (1987,) A Natural Curiosity (1989,) and The Gates of Ivory (1991.)
Drabble’s later works include The Witch of Exmoor (1996,) The Peppered Moth (2001,) The Red Queen (2004,) The Sea Lady (2006,) The Pure Gold Baby (2013,) and The Dark Flood Rises (2016.)
In addition to her novels, Drabble wrote several books on the general subject of literature, journal articles, and screenplays. She was the editor of the fifth and sixth editions of the Oxford Companion to English Literature and wrote biographies of the novelists Arnold Bennett (1974) and Angus Wilson (1995.)
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The human mind can bear plenty of reality, but not too much unintermittent gloom.
—Margaret Drabble
I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I’ll be all right; I’ve got a few veg.
—Margaret Drabble
Topics: Twentieth Century
When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
—Margaret Drabble
Topics: Possibilities, Doubt, Uncertainty
You learn to put your emotional luggage where it will do some good, instead of using it to shit on other people, or blow up aeroplanes.
—Margaret Drabble
Topics: Emotions
Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.
—Margaret Drabble
Topics: Pleasure
I actually remember feeling delight, at two o’clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed to have another look at him.
—Margaret Drabble
Topics: Babies
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