Drabble, Margaret

(British, 1939– )

Born in Sheffield, Margaret Drabble was educated at Cambridge. She is best known as a novelist for her interest in questions of social responsibility. Early work like The Millstone (1965), in which an independent girl with a bright academic future finds herself pregnant, sealed Drabble's position as her generation's definitive chronicler of educated women's lives. The Middle Ground (1980) centres on a woman caught between the conflicting demands of parents and children, while The Witch of Exmoor (1996) portrays a tyrannical mother's hold over her family. The Radiant Way (1987) is an ambitious novel showing the changing relationships of a group of college friends against the political background of postwar England, and The Gates of Ivory (1991) describes the search for a missing novelist in Cambodia. Drabble is also an accomplished biographer and literary editor, and has published widely on a number of literary, social, and historical subjects.

A. S. Byatt, Angus Wilson, Lynne Reid Banks  WB