"I started writing because I suddenly found myself unemployed, suddenly there was no goal, there was nothing for me to aim for, and that's when I wrote my first novel. I needed desperately something to do which would describe where I was and what I was doing."
Margaret Drabble was born on June 5, 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. Her father, John Frederick Drabble, was a barrister, a county court judge and a novelist. Author A.S. Byatt is her older sister. She attended the Mount School, at York, which happened to be a Quaker boarding school. She was awarded a major scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. There she studied English and received double honors. After college she traveled with the Royal Shakespeare Company where she understudied for Vanessa Redgrave.
In 1960, she married actor Clive Smith, whom she had met during her time with the RSC. The couple had three kids, but divorced in 1975. In the early 80's she married biographer Michael Holroyd, and are still married to this day.
Her Novel The Millstone won the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. She also received James Tait Black and E.M. Forster Awards, and awarded the CBE in 1980. Margaret has often been hailed by her peers for ability to get across a clear view of what it's like to live in England.
"I suppose I am obsessed by the woman's role as mother and I think perhaps my mother very heavily influenced me, not always in a very happy way. So I think I'm constantly struggling with the theme of the mother/daughter relationship, I don't think it was one single event, it was a sequence of recurrent events that keep bringing me back to the same problems about my mother, about myself, about my children."
Novels:
A Summer Bird Cage - 1964
The Garrick Year - 1965
The Millstone - 1966
Jerusalem the Golden - 1967
The Waterfall - 1969
The Needle's Eye - 1972
London consequences: a novel - 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 - 1989
The Witch of Exmoor - 1997
The Peppered Moth - 2001
Short Stories:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses - 1964
Hassan's Tower - 1966
A Voyage to Cythera - 1967
A Pyrrhic Victory - 1968
The Reunion - 1968
Faithful Lovers - 1968
Crossing the Alps - 1969
The Gifts of War - 1970
A Success Story - 1974
A Day in the Life of a Public Woman - 1973
Homework - 1978
Biographies:
Arnold Bennett: A Biography - 1974
Angus Wilson: A Biography - 1995
Film/Drama:
Laura - 1964
Isadora - 1968
Bird of Paradise - 1969
A Touch of Love - 1969
sources:
http://www.redmood.com/drabble/biography.html
http://www.redmood.com/drabble/bibliography.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/drabble_life.shtml