Margaret Drabble: An Interview

Abstract

This interview with Margaret Drabble came at a time when she had just finished editing the Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985) and was in the middle of composing her most recent novel, The Radiant Way (1987). In comments on journalism, architecture, feminism, motherhood, foreign affairs, and class issues, she reflects the focus of that novel and of her recent articles on the social conditions in England, especially the contrast between Northern England (where she was raised) and London (where she now lives). She also discusses some of her earlier novels-particularly The Waterfall (1969), The Needle's Eye (1972), The Realms of Gold (1975), The Ice Age (1977), and The Middle Ground (1980)-and talks at length about what many critics consider to be her central theme, fate, in relation to literary conventions.