Background
Drabble, Margaret was born on June 5, 1939 in Sheffield, England. Daughter of John Frederick and Kathleen Marie (Bloor) Drabble.
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book
The Red Queen
( Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an un...)
Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a memoir by a Korean crown princess, written more than two hundred years ago. A highly appropriate gift for her impending trip to Seoul. But from whom? The story she avidly reads on the plane turns out to be one of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless and her husband dead by his own hand. Perhaps it is the loss of a child that resonates so deeply with Barbara . . . but she has little time to think of such things, she has just arrived in Korea. She meets a certain Dr. Oo, and to her surprise and delight he offers to guide her to some of the haunts of the crown princess. As she explores the inner sanctums and the royal courts, Barbara begins to feel a strong affinity for everything related to the princess and her mysterious life. After a brief, intense, and ill-fated love affair, she returns to London. Is she ensnared by the events of the past week, of the past two hundred years, or will she pick up her life where she left it? A beautifully told and ingeniously constructed novel, this is Margaret Drabble at her best. (20040815)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151011060/?tag=2022091-20
The Millstone
( Margaret Drabbles affecting novel, set in London durin...)
Margaret Drabbles affecting novel, set in London during the 1960s, about a casual love affair, an unplanned pregnancy, and one young womans decision to become a mother.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156006197/?tag=2022091-20
The Pure Gold Baby: A Novel
( "Achingly wise . . . Admirers of Marilynne Robinson wil...)
"Achingly wise . . . Admirers of Marilynne Robinson will find themselves very much at home in this book." —Wall Street Journal Jessica Speight, an anthropologist in 1960s London, is at the beginning of a promising academic career when an affair leaves her a single mother. Anna is delightful—a pure gold baby. But as it becomes clear that Anna is not a normal child, the book circles questions of responsibility, potential, even age, with Margaret Drabble’s characteristic intelligence and wit. Told from the point of view of Jess's fellow mothers, The Pure Gold Baby is a movingly intimate look at the unexpected transformations at the heart of motherhood.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544228030/?tag=2022091-20
A Summer Bird Cage (English and Spanish Edition)
(Two sisters: beautiful, sophisticated Louise and attracti...)
Two sisters: beautiful, sophisticated Louise and attractive, witty and intelligent Sarah who has always felt left behind. Then Louise marries the wealthy but unappealing novelist Stephen Halifax, and Sarah, recently graduated from Oxford, is thrown back into family affairs. As Louise enters a high-profile world of glamour, parties and gossip columns, Sarah, drifting in London with her degree and new-found freedom, is only allowed glimpses into this new alien life. However, as the cracks begin to show in Louise's marriage and rumours of infidelity spread, Sarah discovers that, beneath her cool exterior, her sister is not quite the person she thought she was....
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140026347/?tag=2022091-20
The Gates of Ivory
( Liz Headleand is one of Londons best-known and most pr...)
Liz Headleand is one of Londons best-known and most prominent psychiatrists. One day she arrives at work to find a mysterious package, postmarked from Cambodia. Inside, hidden amongst scraps of paper, ancient drawings, and old postcards, she discovers pieces of human finger bones. Shocked but intrigued, she realizes the papers belong to her old friend, Stephen Cox, a playwright who moved to Cambodia to work on a script about the Khmer Rouge. Convinced Stephen is trying to send her some sort of message, Liz follows the clues in the box to the jungles of Cambodia, risking her life to find her friend. In this thrilling new adventure with the heroine of The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity, Margaret Drabble takes us far from the civilized, familiar streets of London, painting an "urgent, brilliant" (The Boston Globe) portrait of the tumultuous, terror-ridden landscape of Cambodia in the late twentieth century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ5FYDE/?tag=2022091-20
The Peppered Moth
( In the early 1900s, Bessie Bawtry, a small child with b...)
In the early 1900s, Bessie Bawtry, a small child with big notions, lives in a South Yorkshire mining town in England. Precocious and refined in a land of little ambition and much mining grime, Bessie waits for the day she can escape the bleak, coarse existence her ancestors had seldom questioned. Nearly a century later Bessie's granddaughter, Faro Gaulden, is listening to a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has returned to the depressed little town in which Bessie grew up and wonders at the families who never left. Confronted with what would have been her life had her grandmother stayed, she finds herself faced with difficult questions. Is she really so different from the South Yorkshire locals? As she soon learns, the past has a way of reasserting itself-not unlike the peppered moth that was once thought to be nearing extinction but is now enjoying a sudden unexplained resurgence. The Peppered Moth is a brilliant novel, full of irony, sadness, and humor.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156007193/?tag=2022091-20
The Seven Sisters
( When circumstances compel her to start over late in her...)
When circumstances compel her to start over late in her life, Candida Wilton moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room, walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London--and begins to pour her soul into a diary. Candida is not exactly destitute. So, is the move perversity, she wonders, a survival test, or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this shabby, menacing, but curiously appealing city? What can happen, at her age, to change her life? In a voice that is pitch-perfect, Candida describes her health club, her social circle, and her attempts at risk-taking in her new life. She begins friendships of sorts with other women-widowed, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations. And then there is a surprise pension-fund windfall . . . A beautifully rendered story, this is Margaret Drabble at her novelistic best.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156028751/?tag=2022091-20
The Dark Flood Rises: A Novel
( One of the Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fictio...)
One of the Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2017 and a New York Times Notable Book of 2017 From the great British novelist Dame Margaret Drabble comes a vital and audacious tale about the many ways in which we confront aging and living in a time of geopolitical rupture. Francesca Stubbs has an extremely full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives “restlessly round England,” which is “her last love . . . She wants to see it all before she dies.” Amid the professional conferences that dominate her schedule, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home cooked dinners to her ailing ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the shocking death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a flood plain in the West Country. Fran cannot help but think of her mortality, but she is “not ready to settle yet, with a cat upon her knee.” She still prizes her “frisson of autonomy,” her belief in herself as a dynamic individual doing meaningful work in the world. The Dark Flood Rises moves between Fran’s interconnected group of family and friends in England and a seemingly idyllic expat community in the Canary Islands. In both places, disaster looms. In Britain, the flood tides are rising, and in the Canaries, there is always the potential for a seismic event. As well, migrants are fleeing an increasingly war-torn Middle East. Though The Dark Flood Rises delivers the pleasures of a traditional novel, it is clearly situated in the precarious present. Margaret Drabble’s latest enthralls, entertains, and asks existential questions in equal measure. Alas, there is undeniable truth in Fran’s insight: “Old age, it’s a fucking disaster!”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374134952/?tag=2022091-20
A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories
( Margaret Drabbles novels have illuminated the past fif...)
Margaret Drabbles novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of ironyall are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs, in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. With an introduction by the Spanish academic José Fernández that places the stories in the context of her life and her novels, this collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0547737351/?tag=2022091-20
Margaret DRABBLE
Edit ProfileEducation
Bachelor with honors, Newnham College, Cambridge, 1960. Doctor of Letters (honorary), University Sheffield, 1976. Doctor of Letters (honorary), University Manchester, 1987.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), University Keele, 1988. Doctor of Letters (honorary), University Bradford, 1988. Doctor of Letters (honorary), University East Anglia, 1994.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), University York, 1995.
Career
Fellow, Regents College, London 1988, Sheffield City Polytechnic 1989. East. M. Forster.
Achievements
Works
book
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The Dark Flood Rises: A Novel
( One of the Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fictio...)
-
The Seven Sisters
( When circumstances compel her to start over late in her...)
-
The Millstone
( Margaret Drabbles affecting novel, set in London durin...)
-
The Red Queen
( Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an un...)
-
A Summer Bird Cage (English and Spanish Edition)
(Two sisters: beautiful, sophisticated Louise and attracti...)
-
A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories
( Margaret Drabbles novels have illuminated the past fif...)
-
The Peppered Moth
( In the early 1900s, Bessie Bawtry, a small child with b...)
-
The Gates of Ivory
( Liz Headleand is one of Londons best-known and most pr...)
-
The Pure Gold Baby: A Novel
( "Achingly wise . . . Admirers of Marilynne Robinson wil...)
-
The Dark Flood Rises: A Novel
Membership
Member of American Academy Arts and Letters (honorary. Foreign member, Engineer of Mines Forster award 1973).
Interests
Connections
Married Clive Swift, June 27, 1960 (divorced 1975). Children: Adam, Rebecca, Joseph. Married Michael Holroyd, 1982.
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Born
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Nationality
British