DRABBLE, MARGARET

born June 5, 1939, Sheffield, Yorkshire, Eng. English writer of novels that are skillfully modulated variations on the theme of a girl's development toward maturity through her experiences of love, marriage, and motherhood. The daughter of a judge and sister of novelist A.S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble began writing after leaving Cambridge University. The central characters of her novels, although widely different in character and circumstance, are shown in situations of tension and stress that are the necessary conditions for their moral growth. Drabble is concerned with the individual's attempt to define the self, but she is also interested in social change. She writes in the tradition of such authors as George Eliot, Henry James, and Arnold Bennett. Her novels include A Summer Bird-cage (1962); The Garrick Year (1964); The Millstone (1965); The Needle's Eye (1972); The Realms of Gold (1975); The Ice Age (1977); The Middle Ground (1980); a trilogy composed of The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), and The Gates of Ivory (1991); and The Witch of Exmoor (1996). In addition to her novels Drabble has written several books on the general subject of literature, as well as journal articles and screenplays.