Margaret Drabble

"Much attention has been paid to the "scientific romance" novels of H.G. Wells, a founder of modern science fiction and one of the genre's greatest writers. In comparison, little attention has been given by critics to his works of fantasy, which in the opinion of many, are just as artistic and worthy of study. This work takes a critical look at Wells' little known fantasy The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine, which is "a parable of dark foreboding that unveils the nothingness of utopian dreams" and foreshadows Franz Kafka's dark fables of the totalitarian age. A lengthy introduction by the editor provides a comprehensive overview of the text and the story of The Sea Lady, and serves to explain the ideas of civil death and every citizen's acting as a public servant, and the concept of totalitarian metaphysics, which deals with a revolt against the limits of the human condition. This work provides a complete, extensively annotated text of the 1902 London first edition of The Sea Lady. Prepared by the world's leading Wellsian scholar, the volume also provides germane appendices and a bibliography."--Jacket.

"It is 1912 and Bessie Bawtry is a small child living in Breaseborough, a South Yorkshire mining town. Unusually gifted, she sits quietly and studies hard, waiting for the day when she can sit the Cambridge entrance exam and escape the kind of life her ancestors have never even thought to question. Her parents are in awe of her - who is this swan-child, is she a freak? (Where did she get her notions? Who did she think she was?)". "Nearly a century later Bessie's granddaughter, Faro Gaulden, is listening to a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has returned to the depressed little town where Bessie grew up and all around her she sees the families who have stayed there for longer than anyone can remember. Faro's father was a desperate, wild, drinking man, the scion of part-Jewish, part-Polish, part-German refugees. But for all her exotic ancestry and glamour, has Faro really travelled any further than her Breaseborough kin?"--BOOK JACKET.

An eccentric English grandmother as seen by her children. One of the more disturbing aspects of Frieda Palmer, a wealthy freethinker and political crusader, is that she has sold the family house to live as a hermit. The children are worried she might blow the rest of the inheritance.

"Angus Wilson (1913-1991) led one of the most remarkable and, until now, uncharted lives in the annals of twentieth-century literature. Here in this long-awaited biography, acclaimed novelist Margaret Drabble portrays Angus Wilson as one of the most brilliant writers of his time, on a par with such literary greats as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, and John Osborne. In this first full biography, Drabble traces Wilson's meteoric career as novelist, critic, lecturer, and man of letters.". "At first an assistant cataloguer at the British Museum, Wilson burst onto the literary scene like a blazing comet in 1949 with a collection of short stories called The Wrong Set. This stunning debut was followed by such memorable books as Hemlock and After, The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, The Old Men at the Zoo, and his most enduring and famous novel, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.". "At once painfully insecure and highly narcissistic, Wilson both captivated and repelled many of the great literary figures of twentieth-century England, inspiring Rebecca West to exclaim nastily that Wilson reminded her of Jane Eyre. Yet Angus Wilson also served as a great influence for many of today's writers including Martin Amis, Jonathan Raban, V S. Pritchett, and Margaret Drabble herself. His satiric, often grotesque, but in the end sympathetic portrayal of his female characters also endeared him to millions of female readers.". "What makes Wilson particularly extraordinary to a new generation of readers is his decision to live life, even as early as the 1940s, as an open homosexual through his lifelong relationship with Tony Garrett and his public opposition to discriminatory homosexual laws. Above all, Angus Wilson is the portrait of an artist of enormous courage, a man who confronted challenge to the end."--BOOK JACKET.

Simon Camish, an embittered, diffident lawyer in a loveless marriage, would not have particularly noticed Rose Vassiliou had he not been asked to drive her home one night after a dinner party. Yet at one time she had been notorious-her name constantly in the news. Now, separated from her Greek husband, she lives alone with her three children. Despite all the efforts and sneers of her friends, she refuses to move from her slum house in a decaying neighborhood to which she has become attached. Gradually, Simon becomes aware that Rose is a woman of remarkable integrity and courage. He is drawn into her affairs when her husband takes legal action to reopen the question of custody of the children-a scheme for getting his wife back. And, while the precise nature of their ties eludes him, Simon comes to realize that Rose and her Greek ex-husband are forever and inextricably bound to each other. --Amazon.com.

January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London and her old friends Liz and Esther to South Yorkshire. Regularly visiting a serial killer in a high-security prison, her natural curiosity in his motives and character transforms into obsession as she begins to look to the murderer for answers about human nature and herself. Meanwhile, now in their fifties, Liz, Esther and their friends come to question the society they live in more than ever as they navigate life in eighties London. The second in a trilogy following on from The Radiant Way, A Natural Curiosity sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of modern Britain.

Liz, Alix and Ester have been part of one another's lives since their Cambridge days twenty-five years ago. Liz is a successful psychotherapist, Alix is a wife and mother, still pursuing politics, and Esther is an academic. As we follow them through the next five years we see their world changing around them, and we see each woman confronted with difficult, often painful, truths--about this new world, and more profoundly, about herself within it.

A look at British culture during the age of Queen Victoria.

Drabble strikes gold with this novel about a famous archaeologist who is passionately in love with a married, slightly mad and very moral man. Alive with feeling and intelligence, endearing characters and feminist insights, this is one of the very best by an immensely gifted author.

Emma spends a year in a furnished house near a theater in a small provincial town in Herefordshire, England, and finds herself strongly drawn to an egocentric actor.