Margaret Drabble
Margaret Drabble is a prominent British writer known for her extensive contributions to literature since the 1960s. Her body of work encompasses novels, essays, biographies, and critical reviews, showcasing her evolution as a writer over decades. Drabble's novels often explore complex themes related to women's experiences, societal expectations, and personal identity, reflecting her own life and the cultural shifts of her time. She grew up in Sheffield, England, in a middle-class family with a strong educational background, which influenced her literary voice and themes.
Throughout her career, Drabble has been associated with the feminist literary movement, addressing issues such as the balance between career and motherhood. Notable works include "A Summer Bird-Cage," which delves into sibling rivalry and family dynamics, and "The Millstone," focusing on the challenges of single motherhood. As her career progressed, Drabble's novels expanded in scope, tackling broader societal issues, as seen in "The Ice Age" and "The Gates of Ivory." In addition to her fiction, she is recognized for her biographies of literary figures like Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson, as well as her editorial work on the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Drabble's writing remains influential, resonating with readers who appreciate her insights into contemporary life and literature.
Margaret Drabble
British novelist, dramatist, and essayist
- Born: June 5, 1939
- Place of Birth: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England
Biography
Since her twenties, Margaret Drabble has been one of Britain’s most important fiction writers. Beginning in 1963, her novels have been popular and critical successes in Great Britain and America. These works display her gradual development as a writer. She has also been a dramatist, a reviewer, an essayist, a short-story writer, a teacher, a lecturer, a literary critic, and an editor. In the last capacity, she is responsible for the revised edition of the classic Oxford Companion to English Literature. She also authors acclaimed biographies of two important English writers, Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson. Her work has been the object of much adulation and critical attention.
Drabble grew up in the industrial city of Sheffield (often described as “Northham” in her novels). Both her parents had risen from working-class backgrounds to obtain degrees from Cambridge University. Her father became a barrister and then a judge. Her mother taught at the Quaker school Drabble herself would attend. Many critics see a Quaker influence in the emphasis Drabble places in her novels on the values of responsibility and service. The family was middle class and professional. All the Drabble children have achieved considerable academic and professional success. One sister is the famous novelist A. S. Byatt (1936-2023). However, parental favoritism and promotion of competition among the four children led to poor relationships and even outright enmity between the siblings, especially Drabble and Byatt. According to the pictures, Drabble gives in some of her novels, particularly in Jerusalem the Golden (1967), she found family life (and life in Sheffield in general) joyless and suffocating.
Like many of her characters, Drabble escaped. She attended Cambridge University (Newnham College), where she distinguished herself as a scholar—she was awarded a “double first” degree in English in 1960—and more obviously as an actor. The next step of her escape was to marry the actor Clive Swift (1936- 2019) and join with Swift the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her career as an actor, mainly as understudy to Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, was cut short by pregnancy. She filled her backstage hours and her time at home with her baby by writing her first novel.
Her early novels mirror her life in the 1960s. Her strained relationship with Byatt is evident in the tensions between sisters in A Summer Bird-Cage (1963). The problems of being a mother married to an actor are at the heart of The Garrick Year (1964). The difficulties of escaping a Midlands background are treated in Jerusalem the Golden. Other novels seem less autobiographical. In The Millstone (1965), the heroine is a single mother and a scholar. In The Waterfall (1969), a very passive heroine experiences a sexual awakening. In these novels, Drabble explores her perplexities: What is it like to be a modern, well-educated young woman in the liberated world of the 1960s? Can such a woman mix the integrity of a career with love and marriage? Can she mix career and motherhood? Drabble found many readers who responded to her concerns. Most of these readers were probably women, and Drabble became known as one of the first waves of the new feminist novelists.
The 1970s were a time of change for Drabble. She separated from Swift and divorced him. She and her three children became established in a house in London's fashionable and lovely Hampstead section. Her three children were growing up, giving her more time to write. Her interests began to broaden. As a result, her novels became broader in theme and scope and longer. The Ice Age (1977) was a “State of England” novel that attempted to evoke the nation's problems and the day's temper. In her last novel of the decade, The Middle Ground (1980), Drabble seems to let her heroine evoke her own state: Kate is unmarried, a woman who faces an uncertain future with energy and hope. This novel clarifies that no neat explanations can define or describe life and that no patterns explain all experiences.
In 1982, she married the famous biographer Michael Holroyd. They kept their own London houses for many years, though they shared a comfortable country home in Somerset. In 1995, Drabble moved from Hampstead to be with Holroyd in west London. She produced a new edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature for several years. Her earlier critical and biographical books on William Wordsworth and Arnold Bennett were inspired by artistic indebtedness, but her biography of Angus Wilson is a work of friendship and admiration. Her later novels have extended her concerns of the mid-1970s. The Radiant Way and its short sequel, A Natural Curiosity (1989), offer descriptions of England’s woes and a diagnosis—or at least a diagnosis of the woes of liberal intellectuals such as Drabble. The Gates of Ivory (1991) could be called a “state of the world” novel, contrasting the good life in England with the life of suffering in developing nations. The Witch of Exmoor (1996) is part satire, part thriller, revolving around the missing Frieda Palmer, an eccentric author. The Peppered Moth (2001) is based on the life of Drabble’s mother and explores the competing claims of nature and nurture in shaping an individual. The Seven Sisters begins with the protagonist, Candida Wilton, dumped by her academic husband and shows her slow transformation into a different person altogether.
Drabble’s 2004 novel, The Red Queen (2004), struck into new territory for Drabble, partially set in eighteenth-century Korea and centered around an actual historical figure. The book goes back and forth between the points of view of the historical Korean crown princess, Lady Hyegyong, and a modern academic who has become fascinated by her life. The Sea Lady (2006) follows feminist activist Ailsa and marine biologist Humphrey, who were once married but have not seen each other for decades, as they both return to the seaside town where they first met as children and The Pure Gold Baby (2013) tells the story of a promising young anthropologist who has the possibility of a brilliant career ahead of her but instead ends up as the single mother of a child with disabilities. In The Dark Flood Rises (2017), the protagonist, Francesca Stubbs, an expert on senior citizen housing, grapples with her mortality.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
A Summer Bird-Cage, 1963
The Garrick Year, 1964
The Millstone, 1965 (also known as Thank You All Very Much)
Jerusalem the Golden, 1967
The Waterfall, 1969
The Needle’s Eye, 1972
The Realms of Gold, 1975
The Ice Age, 1977
The Middle Ground, 1980
The Radiant Way, 1987
A Natural Curiosity, 1989
The Gates of Ivory, 1991
The Witch of Exmoor, 1996
The Peppered Moth, 2000
The Seven Sisters, 2002
The Red Queen, 2004
The Sea Lady: A Late Romance, 2006
The Pure Gold Baby, 2013
The Dark Flood Rises, 2017
Short Fiction:
A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories, 2011 (José Francisco Fernández, editor)
Drama:
Bird of Paradise, pr. 1969
Screenplays:
Isadora, 1969 (with Melvyn Bragg and Clive Exton)
A Touch of Love, 1969 (also known as Thank You All Very Much; adaptation of her novel The Millstone)
Teleplay:
Laura, 1964
Nonfiction:
Wordsworth: Literature in Perspective, 1966
Arnold Bennett: A Biography, 1974
A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature, 1979
The Tradition of Women’s Fiction: Lectures in Japan, 1982
Safe as Houses, 1990
Margaret Drabble in Tokyo, 1991 (Fumi Takano, editor)
Angus Wilson: A Biography, 1995
The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws, 2009
Children’s/Young Adult Literature:
For Queen and Country: Britain in the Victorian Age, 1978
Edited Texts:
Lady Susan The Watsons Sanditon, 1974 (by Jane Austen)
The Genius of Thomas Hardy, 1975
The Oxford Companion to English Literature: New Edition, 1985, revised 6th edition 2000
Bibliography
Bokat, Nicole Suzanne. The Novels of Margaret Drabble: This Freudian Family Nexus. Lang, 1998.
Cox, Fiona. “Margaret Drabble.” Sibylline Sisters: Virgil’s Presence in Contemporary Women’s Writing. Oxford UP, 2011, pp. 115–34.
Creighton, Joanne V. Margaret Drabble. Routledge, 2019.
Drabble, Margaret. Interview with Lydia Perović. Believer, Nov. 2014.
Drabble, Margaret. “Margaret Drabble: ‘At Parties, After a Few Drinks, I Start Asking People to Supper, Which I Always Regret.’" Guardian, 2 Nov. 2013.
Duran, Jane. “Margaret Drabble and Philosophy.” Women, Philosophy and Literature. Ashgate, 2007, pp. 23–40.
Drabble, Margaret. The Red Queen. Canongate Books, 2023.
Holmes, Diana. "Modelling Age: Ageing Women Writers and Their Readers (Annie Ernaux, Margaret Drabble)." French Studies, vol. 77, no. 4, 2023, pp. 558-71. doi.org/10.1093/fs/knad159.
Jani, Bushra Juhi. A Comparative Analysis of Violence in Margaret Drabble and Four Selected Iraqi Novels. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021.
Lee, Young-Oak, and Margaret Drabble. "An Interview with Margaret Drabble." Contemporary Literature, vol. 48, no. 4, 2007, pp. 477-98. doi.org/10.3368/cl.48.4.477.
Özdemir, Derin. “Margaret Drabble’s Fiction: Hysteria and Agency.” International Journal of Social Science and Human Research, 2024, doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v7-i04-39.
Schaub, Michael. “Funny, Profane ‘Dark Flood’ Doesn’t Go Gently.” Review of The Dark Flood Rises, by Margaret Drabble. NPR, 15 Feb. 2017, www.npr.org/2017/02/15/514378053/funny-profane-dark-flood-doesnt-go-gently. Accessed 23 May. 2017.