Margaret Drabble

Esposas sin maridos. Madres y hermanas. Mujeres que se debaten entre la vocación artística y las exigencias familiares. Científicas que han decidido dejar de teñirse el pelo y de ir por la vida disculpandose por cada paso que dan. Amor no consumado, vanidad y soledad. El poderoso universo ficcional de Margaret Drabble se concentra en estos cuentos que abarcan cuatro decadas de produccion literaria. Una madre trabajadora que puede con todo y acaba sus enloquecidos dias con una sonrisa. Una prestigiosa investigadora que acaba de recibir el Nobel por el descubrimiento del gen de la vanidad. Una mujer que suspira aliviada cuando muere su esposo, y una romantica empedernida que busca el amor en los trenes. Trece relatos, la totalidad de la produccion de Drabble en este genero, que constituyen una muestra exquisita de la capacidad de ironia, lirismo y amplitud discursiva de una de las narradoras britanicas mas importantes del siglo XX.

A comienzos de los años sesenta, despues de un relajado año sabático en París al termino de sus estudios en Oxford, Sarah vuelve a casa de sus padres, en Warwickshire, para celebrar la boda de su hermana mayor Louise, con quien siempre ha tenido una gran rivalidad. Louise es guapa, elegante, socialmente admirada; Sarah, inteligente, ingeniosa y brillante, siempre ha pensado que estaba por debajo de ella. El matrimonio de Louise con un novelista de exito la lanza al gran mundo del glamour, las fiestas y los ecos de sociedad, mientras Sarah aun tiene que decidir que hacer con su vida, medio perdida en la inmensidad de Londres y a la sombra del exito de su hermana.

Edited by Margaret DrabbleAn institution since 1932, the newly revised fifth edition of the standard reference to English literature and its writers, origins, cultural context, criticism, and European influences features sixteen new articles on literary concepts and genres. UP.The first edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Sir Paul Harvey, was published in 1932, and quickly established itself as as the standard source of reference for scholars, students, and general readers alike. In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, the text was thoroughly and sensitively revised to bring it up to date without losing its essential character, or the lightness of touch that made it such a pleasure to dip into. The sixth edition, published in 2000, was extensively revised, expanded, and updated. Almost 600 new entries covered new writers, genres, and issues, and existing entries were reworked to incorporate the latest scholarship. The text was written by a team of more than 140 contributors under Margaret Drabble's editorial direction, including Brian Aldiss, Lisa Appignanesi, Jonathan Coe, Penelope Fitzgerald, Roy Porter, and Salman Rushdie. In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured entries on key topics including black British literature, fantasy fiction, and modernism. The Companion remains an unrivalled work that places English literature in its widest context: no other book offers such extensive exploration of the classical roots of English literature, and the European and non-European works and writers that have influenced its development.

El título de La piedra de moler es una cita del Evangelio (Mateo, 18, 6), el símbolo de una pesada carga. La protagonista de esta novela, una joven brillante que prepara su docto­rado sobre el soneto isa­belino en el swinging London de la década de 1960, se queda embarazada del hombre con quien tiene relaciones sexuales por primera y única vez. Tras las primeras dudas, decide seguir adelante con el embarazo y dar a luz sin pareja, sin casarse, sin decirle nada al padre de la criatura. Una compleja reflexión sobre lo que significa tanto la independencia como la necesidad de los demás.

"Francesca Stubbs pasa de los setenta, pero aún goza de salud, y aunque hace tiempo que debería estar jubilada, trabaja gustosa para una institución benéfica que ofrece asistencia a ancianos que se enfrentan a penurias de todo tipo. Las personas que la rodean tambien se ven abocadas a luchar por salvaguardar la dignidad en el ultimo tramo de su existencia, una existencia que mas que disfrutarse,se sobrelleva. La obra de Drabble es tan valiente y hermosa porque lleva a cabo la revolucionaria idea de tratar a los ancianos como personas, porque habla desde la comprension y el amor. Una novela que plantea que es una buena vida y, por lo tanto, que es una buena muerte."

«La protagonista era una mujer de su tiempo, atrapada en el principio de una época en la que no sabía cómo entrar: en la frontera del ligue de una noche y de la virgen ignorante y el ligue de una noc

Francesca Stubbs pasa de los setenta, pero aún goza de salud, y aunque hace tiempo que debería estar jubilada, trabaja gustosa para una institución benéfica que ofrece asistencia a ancianos que se enfrentan a penurias de todo tipo. Las personas que la rodean tambien se ven abocadas a luchar por salvaguardar la dignidad en el ultimo tramo de su existencia, una existencia que mas que disfrutarse, se sobrelleva. La obra de Drabble es tan valiente y hermosa porque lleva a cabo la revolucionaria idea de tratar a los ancianos como personas, porque habla desde la comprension y el amor. Una novela que plantea que es una buena vida y, por lo tanto, que es una buena muerte.

Arnold Bennett was born in a street called Hope Street. A street less hopeful it would be hard to imagine. Thus begins Margaret Drabbles biography of a man whose most famous achievement was to re-create, in such novels as The Old Wives Taleand 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 Bennetts background, his childhood and origins, for they are very similar to my own. My mothers 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.

Anna is a child of special, unknowable qualities. She is a happy child, always willing to smile at the world around her. But she also presents profound challenges. For her mother Jess, still in her early twenties, living alone in North London and hoping to embark on an adventurous career, her arrival will prove life-transforming.

Anna is a child of special, unknowable qualities. She is a happy child, always willing to smile at the world around her. But she also presents profound challenges. For her mother Jess, still in her early twenties, living alone in North London and hoping to embark on an adventurous career, her arrival will prove life-transforming.

On dit que ce n''est pas la destination qui compte, mais le voyage... Ailsa est dans l''avion, Humphrey dans le train. Ils doivent se retrouver au bout du chemin, a Finsterness, le petit village au bord de la mer du Nord ou ils se sont connus, enfants, dans l''immediat apres-guerre. Ils ne se sont pas revus depuis des decennies. La derniere fois que leurs routes se sont croisees, au debut des annees soixante, Ailsa, la feministe avide de publicite, la fantasque, l''outranciere, et Humphrey, le tranquille doctorant en biologie marine, se sont follement aimes... et dechires. Une rupture qui a imprime leurs vies futures. On dit qu''on n''oublie jamais son premier amour. Le hasard - si c''est bien lui - veut que les deux sexagenaires soient aujourd''hui invites par la meme universite pour se voir remettre un doctorat honoris causa. Alors qu''ils se rapprochent de ce Nord de legende ou tout a commence, les souvenirs et les interrogations affleurent. Qu''est-ce qui les attend, a la fin du voyage. Naviguant entre passe et present, entre fantaisie et &emotion, la piquante Margaret Drabble materialise le royaume de l''enfance, les sables mouvants de l''existence et la fuite du temps.

Margaret Drabble's The Millstone was published in 1965. Set in a London not yet quite swinging, where sexual liberation is still on its way, this prize-winning novel follows the progress of Rosamund Stacey, who becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand, and must adapt to life as a single mother - finding herself transformed in the process.

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.