Margaret Drabble – författare

'There aren't many chroniclers of our older years who do it so well, with such wit and realism and intelligence' TESSA HADLEY'I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work' SALLY ROONEY'Wise, elegiac' The Times'One of Britain's most dazzling writers' New York Times'Generous, perceptive and good-humoured' JOAN BAKEWELL'One of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around' Financial TimesWe all age differently, some stoically, some angrily, some calmly, some with an unfailing spirit of adventure and an undimmed curiosityFrom one of our finest literary voices, The Great Good Places is a luminous collection of essays, stories and memoir that traverses the experience of growing older and looking back on a life deeply lived.Drawing on decades of reading, writing and observation, Margaret Drabble reflects on the complex business of ageing, the strange workings of memory - its wonders and its fragility - and on the 'great good places', the childhood homes, coastal sanctuaries and cherished libraries that shape who we are.Rich with a lifetime's worth of insight and wisdom and peppered with Drabble's trademark lucidity and wit, The Great Good Places is an elegantly layered and profoundly moving meditation on time, place and the enduring power of recollection.

Collecting three lesser-known works by one of the nineteenth century's greatest authors, Jane Austen's Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon is edited with an introduction by Margaret Drabble in Penguin Classics.These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine Emma Watson finds her marriage opportunities limited by poverty and pride. Written in the last months of Austen's life, the uncompleted novel Sanditon, set in a newly established seaside resort, offers a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators, and shows an author contemplating a the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution with a mixture of scepticism and amusement.Margaret Drabble's introduction examines these three works in the context of Jane Austen's major novels and her life, and discusses the social background of her fiction. This edition features a new chronology.Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. Austen began writing at a young age, embarking on what is possibly her best-known work, Pride and Prejudice, at the age of 22. She was also the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park.If you enjoyed Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon, you may like Charlotte Brontë's Tales of Angria, also available in Penguin Classics.'In [Sanditon] she exploits her greatest gifts, her management of dialogue and her skill with monologue. The book feels open and modern ... as vigorous and inventive as her earlier work'Carol Shields

»Med exaktheten hos en Jane Austen och giftigheten hos en Evelyn Waugh, med subtil humor och elegant psykologi, naglar Margaret Drabble fast egenkärleken hos sina karaktärer och det samhälle de företräder.« | LOS ANGELES TIMES» Margaret Drabble har lyckats åstadkomma ett panoramaperspektiv över det moderna livet.« | THE CHICAGO TRIBUNEUnga smarta litteraturstudenten Rosamund Stacey blir gravid under sin hittills enda kärleksnatt, med den sexuellt förvirrade George. Mot alla odds bestämmer hon sig för att behålla barnet och samtidigt inte berätta för George att han är pappan. Det är London och 1960-tal; det är långt ifrån socialt accepterat att vara ogift mor. Rosamund tvingas lära sig en hel del: om moderskap, om sig själv och samhället runt omkring henne.Margaret Drabbles roman Kvarnstenen [The Millstone] från 1965 räknas som en av de feministiska klassikerna och dess tankar om moderskap, klass och självständighet utmanar än i dag. I översättning av Else Lundgren och med ett nyskrivet förord av kritikern Annina Rabe.MARGARET DRABBLE är en engelsk författare och dramatiker, född i Sheffield 1939. Kritikerhyllad redan med debutromanen A Summer Bird-Cage [1963]. Sedan decennier räknas hon till Storbritanniens viktigaste författare.

January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London to Yorkshire. There, she regularly visits a mass-murderer in a high-security prison. But has her natural curiosity in his motives and character crept into obsession? Meanwhile, Alix's life continues to cross and uncross with her old friends Liz and Esther, now all in their fifties. As the years pass, they increasingly question the brutally prosperous and atrocity-hungry society they live in, and their complicity in it, as they navigate life in 1980s Britain. The second in a trilogy following on from The Radiant Way and finishing with The Gates of Ivory, A Natural Curiosity sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of the time.

Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. In this collection of her complete short fiction from across four decades, she examines the intense private worlds and passions of everyday people.From one man's honeymooning epiphany in 'Hassan's Tower' to the journeying fantasies of 'A Voyage to Cythera', and from the sharp joy of 'The Merry Widow' to the bloody reality of the collection's title story, these are moving, witty and provocative tales, exploring cruel and loving relationships, social change and personal obsessions, and confirming her status as a leading practitioner of the art of the short story.

One hot summer afternoon in South Yorkshire, Faro sits at a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has travelled from London to the Northern mining town where generations of her family have lived and worked, to explore her own past. Decades before, in the early twentieth century, Bessie Bawtry also ponders her place in the world. A child of unusual determination and precocious intelligence, she longs for the day she will eventually escape the working-class life her ancestor would never have dreamt of leaving.The Peppered Moth explores the way we are shaped by our environment and ancestry, told with elegant prose, wry humour and captivating storytelling, through the story of one family across generations through the twentieth century.'Margaret Drabble is writing, not about an individual, but about a generation, or two, or more - of women . . . This is a sad tale, tenderly told, embedded in a robust family chronicle' - Doris Lessing

The Pure Gold Baby is the story of Anna, a little girl with a luminescent quality, her mother, Jess, and the community that envelops them. A happy child, Anna is the unchanging core of this journey spanning decades and continents through the lives of those that love her.This profoundly engaging portrait of family, friendship, and the way we care for each other is a powerful reminder, if one were needed, of Margaret Drabble's literary greatness.

»En oerhört stimulerande rikedom av röster, perspektiv, diskussioner. Drabble lyckas också fånga det där otydliga och komplexa skeendet när en tidsanda glider över i en annan.« | AFTONBLADETLiz får ett paket med posten från en nära vän hon inte hört av på länge. Frimärkena är stämplade i Kambodja. Innehållet är lika gåtfullt som upprörande: bland fragment av dagböcker, brev, manus och fotografier finns - ett avhugget finger. Det var flera år sedan Stephen Cox reste i väg för att samla material till en pjäs om Pol Pot. Nu vet ingen var han befinner sig.Margaret Drabbles Elfenbensporten [The Gates of Ivory, 1991] befolkas av en intellektuell medelklass med absolut koll på vad som är korrekt att säga, men utan mod att agera. En engelsk romanklassiker om ett åttiotal vars politiska klimat nu gör sig starkt påmint igen.I översättning av Britt Arenander och med ett nyskrivet förord av kritikern Marie Peterson.MARGARET DRABBLE är en engelsk författare och dramatiker, född i Sheffield 1939, som hyllades av kritikerna redan för sin debutroman A Summer Bird Cage [1963]. Sedan decennier räknas hon till Storbritanniens viktigaste författare.»Elfenbensporten följer ett stort antal personer, låter dem tala och tänka, utan att författaren alltid precisera vem och var och när. Associationerna flödar och jag märker att jag som i läsningen av Ulysses känner att nej, nu får vi ta och bena upp det här. För att i nästa stund ge upp och följa med i vågorna av människors förehavanden, små och stora.« | MARIA SCHOTTENIUS, DN»Om det är något Margaret Drabble gör i Elfenbensporten så är det att skriva fram gestalter som är mycket mänskliga, som känns helt på riktigt. I denna värld med sin starka förnimmelse av att allt är på låtsas, lyckas hon ändå gjuta så mycket liv i sina romanfigurer att jag tror på dem.« | THERESE ERIKSSON, SvD»Det här är böcker man vill ge i present åt sina kloka väninnor, för att tillsammans kunna häpna över det som känns gammalt i dem och förenas i instämmande över det som inte gör det.« | PIA INGSTRÖM, HUFVUDSTADSBLADET, OM MARGARET DRABBLES FÖRFATTARSKAP

»Margaret Drabbles mest fullödiga och trollbindande roman.« JOYCE CAROL OATES »Bräddfull av intelligens.« NEW YORK TIMES »Riken av guld är en hyllning till människan som del av naturen.« JOHN UPDIKE, THE NEW YORKER Frances Wingate är en av världens mest lysande arkeologer. Tack vare henne hittades ruinerna efter ett antikt handelscentrum i Saharaöknen. Men det finns ett förflutet hon inte lyckas bringa till liv. Sitt eget. Hon ångrar inte att hon övergav sitt äktenskap, men hon ångrar att hon gjorde slut med Karel Schmidt, historiker vid ett litet engelskt universitet, som hon inser är hennes livs kärlek. Hon kontaktar honom men får inget svar. När Karel väl försöker nå Frances måste han resa till Afrika för att hitta henne. Riken av guld [The Realms of Gold, 1975] av Margaret Drabble är en modern engelsk klassiker. I översättning av Sonja Bergvall och med ett nyskrivet förord av kritikern Therese Eriksson. MARGARET DRABBLE är en engelsk författare och dramatiker, född i Sheffield 1939. Kritikerhyllad redan med debutromanen A Summer Bird-Cage [1963]. Sedan decennier räknas hon till Storbritanniens viktigaste författare.

A celebration of the drama and intensity of the mother-child relationship, Margaret Drabble'sThe Millstone won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1965.It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand. Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood. Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.'Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine . . . what spirit is here' Sunday Times'One of our foremost women writers' Guardian'The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London' The New York TimesMargaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, the daughter of barrister and novelist John F. Drabble, and sister of novelist A.S. Byatt. She is the author of eighteen novels and eight works of non-fiction, including biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson. Her many novels include The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Peppered Moth (2000), The Seven Sisters (2002) and The Red Queen (2004) all of which are published by Penguin. In 1980, Margaret Drabble was made a CBE and in 2008 she was made DBE. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd, and lives in London and Somerset.

A celebration of the drama and intensity of the mother-child relationship, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand. Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood. 'Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine . . . what spirit is here' Sunday Times'One of our foremost women writers' Guardian'The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London' The New York Times

‘Thames & Hudson’s new, affordable, covetable ‘Pocket Perspectives’: beautifully illustrated essays by canonical writers’ Financial Times A highly acclaimed exploration of the way in which the landscape has both influenced and been represented in British Romantic literature. Margaret Drabble on the Romantics presents an image of Britain as seen through the eyes of some of its most celebrated authors. Many of the Romantics, as well as their successors, are closely associated with particular landscapes – the Wordsworths with the Lake District, Walter Scott with the Scottish Borders, the Brontë sisters with West Yorkshire. Margaret Drabble deepens our understanding of this connection, unpacking the Romantics' fascination with all varieties of rural landscape, from roaring seas to tranquil villages, while also exploring their writing's subtler associations. Herself a star in the literary firmament, Drabble illuminates how this love of place fashioned some of the Romantics' greatest works. She considers the resonances of myth and legend, art and earlier literature that the Romantics found in places such as North Wales and Cornwall and investigates how their writing has, in turn, shaped our visual attitudes, taste in landscape and relation to nature.

The love of place is endemic in English literature, from the work of the earliest poets and hermits to the suburban celebrations of John Betjeman, covering all varieties of the British rural and urban landscape. This book presents an image of Britain as seen by writers of different regions and periods, and also illuminates the way in which their work has changed our visual attitudes, our taste in landscape and our relation to nature.

Angus Wilson was a critic, lecturer and man of letters. Pre-eminently though he was a novelist, indeed, in the words of Paul Bailey 'no other novelist of his generation offered as complete and detailed a portrait of English society.'His first volume of stories, The Wrong Set (1949) - reissued in Faber Finds - launched Wilson as one of the most controversial, colourful and entertaining figures on the post-war literary scene, and he rapidly developed into a major novelist, maturing from enfant terrible to elder statesman in the process. Margaret Drabble's biography traces the influences of his bizarrely extended family, his years as a librarian at the British Museum - interrupted by a grim spell in the code-breaking huts at Bletchley Park - and his unexpected liberation as a writer. It portrays the dizzying progress of a writer and enthusiast whose work was at the forefront of English fiction for the second-half of the twentieth-century: above all it is a portrait of an artist of enormous courage, a man who confronted challenge to the very end. In his later years he became both influence and mentor for a younger generation of writers, including Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain and Margaret Drabble herself. Margaret Drabble knew Angus Wilson from the late 1960s and her biography is enriched with personal knowledge and recollections.'He has been fortunate in his biographer . . . Altogether, with the assistance and consent of Tony Garrett, the dedicatee and second hero of the book, she has given a minute, intimate and candid account . . . of Wilson's hectic life.' Frank Kermode, London Review of Books 'A solid tribute of scholarship and affection' Penelope Fitzgerald, Independent'No one interested in the story of modern fiction can fail to find this life fascinating. Its virtues - a bright, crowded canvas, warmth, a witty, polished style - are those of Wilson's novels . . . Through it all shines so human a picturer of a courageous, doubting, eccentric, driven writer.' Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times

Arnold Bennett was born in a street called Hope Street. A street less hopeful it would be hard to imagine.' Thus begins Margaret Drabble's biography of a man whose most famous achievement was to re-create, in such novels as The Old Wives' Tale and Clayhanger, the life, atmosphere and character of the 'Five Towns' region in which he was born and grew up.Arnold Bennett is a very personal book. 'What interests me', writes the author, 'is Bennett's background, his childhood and origins, for they are very similar to my own. My mother's family came from the Potteries, and the Bennett novels seem to me to portray a way of life that still existed when I was a child, and indeed persists in certain areas. So like all books this has been partly an act of self-exploration.'Of Bennett as a writer Drabble says 'The best books I think are very fine indeed, on the highest level, deeply moving, original and dealing with material that I had never before encountered in fiction, but only in life: I feel they have been underrated, and my response to them is so constant, even after years of work on them and constant re-readings, that I want to communicate enthusiasm.'Of Bennett as a man she paints an affectionate portrait, not glossing over the irritability, dyspepsia and rigidity which at times made him so difficult a companion but reminding us too of his honesty, kindliness and sensitivity. 'Many a time,' she writes at the end of the book, 're-reading a novel, reading a letter or a piece of his Journal, I have wanted to shake his hand, or to thank him, to say well done. I have written this instead.

How are great turning points in history experienced by individuals?As Britain pulls away from Europe great British writers come together to give voice to their innermost feelings. These writers include novelists, writers of books for children, of comic books, humourists, historians, biographers, nature writers, film writers, travel writers, writers young and old and from an extraordinary range of backgrounds. Most are famous perhaps because they have won the Booker or other literary prizes, written bestsellers, changed the face of popular culture or sold millions of records. Others are not yet household names but write with depth of insight and feeling.There is some extraordinary writing in this book. Some of these pieces are expressions of love of particular places in Europe. Some are true stories, some nostalgic, some hopeful. Some are cries of pain. There are hilarious pieces. There are cries of pain and regret. Some pieces are quietly devastating. All are passionate.Conceived as a love letter to Europe, this book may also help reawaken love for Britain. It shows the unique richness and diversity of British cultures, a multitude of voices in harmony.Contributors include:Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Philip Ardagh, Jake Arnott, Patricia Atkinson, Paul Atterbury, Richard Beard, Mary Beard, Don Boyd, Melvyn Bragg, Gyles Brandreth, Kathleen Burke, James Buxton, Philip Carr, Brian Catling, Shami Chakrabarti, Chris Cleave, Mark Cocker, Peter Conradi , Heather Cooper, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Roger Crowley, David Crystal, William Dalrymple, Lindsey Davies, Margaret Drabble, Mark Ellen, Richard Evans, Michel Faber, Sebastian Faulks, Ranulph Fiennes, Robert Fox, James Fox, Neil Gaiman, Evelyn Glennie, James Hanning, Nick Hayes, Alan Hollinghurst, Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch, Will Hutton, Robert Irwin, Holly Johnson , Liane Jones, Ruth Jones, Sam Jordison, Kapka Kassabova, AL Kennedy, Hermione Lee, Prue Leith, Patrick Lenox, Roger Lewis, David Lindo, Penelope Lively, Beth Lync, Richard Mabey, Sue MacGregor, Ian Martin, Frank McDonough, Jonathan Meades, Andrew Miller, Deborah Moggach, Ben Moor, Alan Moore, Paul Morley, Jackie Morris, Charles Nicholl, Richard Overy, Chris Riddell, Adam Roberts, Tony Robinson, Lee Rourke, Sophie Sabbage, Marcus Sedgwick, Richard Shirreff, Paul Stanford, Isy Suttie, Sandi Toksvig, Colin Tudge, Ed Vulliamy, Anna Whitelock, Kate Williams, Michael Wood, Louisa Young