Margaret Drabble

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Drabble, Margaret (1939– ), novelist, born in Sheffield, educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. Her early novels deal primarily with the dilemma of educated young women caught in the conflicting claims of maternity, sexuality, and intellectual and economic aspiration. A Summer Birdcage (1963) was followed by The Garrick Year (1964), The Millstone (1966), Jerusalem the Golden (1968), The Waterfall (1969), The Needle's Eye (1972), The Realms of Gold (1975), The Ice Age (1977), and The Middle Ground (1980). She produced a trilogy of novels—The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), and The Gates of Ivory (1991)—which follows the fortunes of three women friends through the social and political changes in Britain in the 1980s. Her later novels have a broader canvas, a more ironic relationship with traditional narration, and a wider interest in documenting social change. Recent novels include The Witch of Exmoor (1996), a mordant family chronicle inspired by a premise borrowed from John Rawls, The Peppered Moth (2001), and The Seven Sisters (2002). Her other works include A Writer's Britain (1979) and a biography of Angus Wilson (1995). A. S. Byatt is her sister, and she is married to M. Holroyd.

Margaret Drabble 1939–, English novelist, b. Sheffield, Yorkshire; sister of A. S. Byatt . Drabble's rigorous and unsentimentally realistic vision of an England split between traditional values and contemporary desires is apparent in such works as The Millstone (1965), The Waterfall (1969), The Needle's Eye (1972), and The Middle Ground (1980), and in her critical studies on Wordsworth (1966) and Arnold Bennett (1974). A noted scholar, she also edited the Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985, 1996). Drabble's later novels have become more complex and her fictional focus has moved from society as a whole to an insightful analysis of the fate of women, as in The Radiant Way (1987), its sequel, A Natural Curiosity (1989), The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Peppered Moth (2001), whose central character is based on her mother, The Seven Sisters (2002), and The Sea Lady (2006). Her complete short stories, 14 in all, were published as A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman (2011). Drabble was made a dame of the British Empire in 2008.

Bibliography: See her autobiographical The Pattern in the Carpet (2009); V. G. Myer, Margaret Drabble: A Reader's Guide (1991); studies by D. Schmidt, ed. (1982), M. H. Moran (1983), S. Roxman (1984), J. V. Creighton (1985), E. C. Rose, ed. (1985), L. V. Sadler (1986), N. F. Stovel (1989), I. Wojcik-Andrews (1995), and N. S. Bokat (1998).

Drabble, Margaret (1939– ) English novelist, sister of A. S. Byatt. Her debut novel was The Summer Birdcage (1963). The Millstone (1965) was filmed as A Touch of Love. Later work includes the trilogy The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), and The Gates of Ivory (1991).