Editing Margaret Drabble (section)

==Writing==
Drabble's early novels were published by [[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]] (1963–87), while the publishers of her later works were [[Penguin Books|Penguin]], [[Viking Press|Viking]] and [[Canongate Books|Canongate]], and a recurring theme is the correlation between contemporary England's society and its people. Most of her [[protagonist]]s are women<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/59758/31295006056070.pdf|title=Margaret Drabble's reams of gall: the feminist writer who dislikes women|year=1991}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://theshortstory.co.uk/smiling-women-an-exploration-of-margaret-drabbles-short-stories-by-kate-jones/|title='Smiling Women: An Exploration Of Margaret Drabble's Short Stories'|publisher=TSS Publishing|first=Kate|last=Jones|date=16 January 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321681556|title='The sap began to flow': Nature and the quest for the female self in margaret drabble's [short story] 'the merry widow'|first=I. M. A.|last=Cuevas|date=January 2017|quote=Through her invariably female protagonists, Margaret Drabble frequently imprints her narratives with the concerns of women from very different contexts and at various stages in their lives in their quest for identity.}}</ref> and the realistic descriptions of her figures often derive from Drabble's personal experiences; thus, her first novels describe the life of young women during the 1960s and 1970s, for whom the conflict between motherhood and intellectual challenges is being brought into focus, while ''[[The Witch of Exmoor]]'', published in 1996, shows the withdrawn existence of an elderly writer. As [[Hilary Mantel]] wrote in 1989: "Drabble's heroines have aged with her, becoming solid and sour, more prone to drink and swear; yet with each successive book their earnest, moral nature blossoms".<ref name="Mantel 1989"/> Her characters' tragic faults reflect their political and economic situation. Drabble wrote novels, she claimed in 2011, "to keep myself company".<ref name="The Millstone 2011"/>

Her first novel, ''[[A Summer Bird-Cage]]'', was published in 1963. She wrote it, she said, because she had just got married and "the children—I had one and was expecting another—and writing was such a convenient career to combine with having a family".<ref name="The Paris Review"/> With it she found her "informal first-person narrative voice", which she said was an unexpected discovery.<ref name="The Millstone 2011"/> She maintained this approach for her first three books, having "liberated myself from the neutral critical prose of the university essay", which she nevertheless admitted she had enjoyed writing.<ref name="The Millstone 2011"/>

Her second novel ''[[The Garrick Year]]'', published in 1964, drew upon her theatrical experience.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Her third novel, ''[[The Millstone (novel)|The Millstone]]'', was published in 1965. About a woman with a baby, Drabble made her character unmarried so as to avoid having to write about marriage or the baby's father.<ref name="The Millstone 2011"/> She used the personal experience of one of her own children's diagnosis with a [[lesion]] (a [[hole in the heart]]) to inform her writing on the illness she gave the child.<ref name="The Millstone 2011"/> Indeed, Drabble herself wrote ''The Millstone'' whilst pregnant with her own child, that is, her third.<ref name="The Millstone 2011">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/19/book-club-margaret-drabble-millstone|title=The Millstone by Margaret Drabble|work=The Guardian|first=Margaret|last=Drabble|date=19 March 2011}}</ref> On the book's fiftieth anniversary in 2015, [[Tessa Hadley]] described it as "the seminal 60s feminist novel that [[Doris Lessing]]'s ''[[The Golden Notebook]]'' is always supposed to be".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/15/the-millstone-the-crucial-1960s-feminist-novel|title=The Millstone – the crucial 1960s feminist novel|work=The Guardian|first=Tessa|last=Hadley|date=15 May 2015}}</ref> Drabble admitted, years after writing ''The Millstone'': "I didn't realise until many years later that some of the medical details I invented were way off the mark".<ref name="The Millstone 2011"/>

Drabble's fourth novel, ''[[Jerusalem the Golden]]'', was published in 1967. It is also about an English woman who, not unlike Drabble, is from the north of the country and is attending university in London.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Her fifth novel, ''[[The Waterfall (novel)|The Waterfall]]'', was published in 1969. It is experimental.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Drabble's sixth novel, ''[[The Needle's Eye (novel)|The Needle's Eye]]'', was published in 1972.<ref name="Randall Stevenson 2004">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2q2m1alqgywC&pg=PA541|title=''The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 12: The Last of England''|publisher=Oxford University Press|first=Randall|last=Stevenson|year=2004|page=541|isbn=978-0-19-158884-6 }}</ref> It is about an [[heir]]ess who gives away her [[inheritance]].<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Her seventh novel ''[[The Realms of Gold]]'', published in 1975, has a lady [[Archaeology|archaeologist]] as its central character.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Her eighth novel ''[[The Ice Age (novel)|The Ice Age]]'', published in 1977, is set in 1970s England and the social and economic conditions of that time.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Drabble's ninth novel ''[[The Middle Ground]]'', published in 1980, has a lady journalist as its central character.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> [[Margaret Forster]], normally one of her kinder reviewers, called ''The Middle Ground'' "not a novel but a [[Sociology|sociological]] treatise".<ref name="Mantel 1989">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/11/23/england-whose-england/|title=England, Whose England?|magazine=The New York Review of Books|first=Hilary|last=Mantel|date=23 November 1989}}</ref>

Her eleventh novel, titled ''[[A Natural Curiosity]]'', published in 1989, continues the story of characters from her tenth novel, titled ''[[The Radiant Way]]'', which was published in 1987. Drabble apologised to her readers in a [[preface]] to ''A Natural Curiosity'' and said a sequel had been unintended.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-09-24-bk-133-story.html|title=Psychoanalyzing Britain: A NATURAL CURIOSITY by Margaret Drabble (Viking: $19.95; 309 pp.)|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|language=en-US|issn=0458-3035|first=Hermione|last=Lee|date=24 September 1989|access-date=2016-03-23}}</ref> Her thirteenth novel ''[[The Witch of Exmoor]]'', published in 1996, treats of contemporary Britain.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Drabble's fourteenth novel ''[[The Peppered Moth]]'', published in 2001, treats of a young girl growing up in a mining town in [[South Yorkshire]] and spans four generations of her family.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> Her fifteenth novel ''[[The Seven Sisters (novel)|The Seven Sisters]]'', published in 2002, is about a woman whose marriage has collapsed and off she goes to Italy.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> ''[[The Observer]]'' referred to part of her sixteenth novel, ''[[The Red Queen (Drabble novel)|The Red Queen]]'' (published in 2004), as "[[Psychobabble|psychodrabble]]", noting her claim in the book's preface that she is seeking "universal transcultural human characteristics".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/22/fiction.features|title=Seoul destroying|work=[[The Observer]]|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077|first=David|last=Jays|date=21 August 2004}}</ref> [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] compared Drabble's seventeenth novel, ''[[The Sea Lady (Drabble novel)|The Sea Lady]]'' (published in 2006), favourably with her earlier book ''The Needle's Eye''.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview13|title=Mermaid on Dry Land|work=The Guardian|first=Ursula K.|last=Le Guin|authorlink=Ursula K. Le Guin|date=22 July 2006}}</ref> In 2009, Drabble announced she would cease to write fiction, for fear of "repeating herself".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/2013/10/20/225461025/margaret-drabble-spins-a-mother-daughter-yarn-into-gold|title=Margaret Drabble Spins A Mother-Daughter Yarn Into 'Gold'|publisher=[[NPR]]|first=Meg|last=Wolitzer|date=2 October 2013}}</ref> The same year, she published her memoir ''The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws''.<ref name="British Council: Literature"/> In addition, two further novels would in fact follow: ''[[The Pure Gold Baby]]'' (2013), and ''[[The Dark Flood Rises]]'' (2016). Speaking in Belfast in 2024, Drabble was clear that ''The Dark Flood Rises'' was her final novel.

''A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman,'' a collection of the 14 short stories that Drabble published between 1966 and 2000, appeared in 2011.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/14/day-smiling-woman-drabble-review|title=A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: The Collected Stories by Margaret Drabble — review|work=The Guardian|first=Natasha|last=Tripney|date=14 April 2013|quote=This collection of 14 stories, assembled by the Spanish academic José Francisco Fernández, spans four decades of Margaret Drabble's writing career, from 1966 to 2000.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/30/margaret-drabble-smiling-woman-review|title=A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble — review|work=The Guardian|first=Elaine|last=Showalter|authorlink=Elaine Showalter|date=30 June 2011}}</ref> Drabble's other writing includes several screenplays, plays and short stories, as well as non-fiction such as ''A Writer's Britain: Landscape and Literature'' and biographies of [[Arnold Bennett]] and [[Angus Wilson]].<ref name="Randall Stevenson 2004"/> Her critical works include studies of [[William Wordsworth]] and [[Thomas Hardy]]. She edited two editions of ''[[The Oxford Companion to English Literature]]'' in 1985 and 2000.<ref name="Randall Stevenson 2004"/>

Drabble served as chairman<!-- THE SOURCE USES CHAIRMAN --> of the National Book League (now [[Booktrust Early Years Award|Booktrust]]) from 1980 until 1982.<ref name="British Council: Literature">{{cite web|url=https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/margaret-drabble|title=Margaret Drabble|publisher=[[British Council]]: Literature|accessdate=25 October 2022}}</ref>