Margaret Drabble Book order (chronological)

Ailsa and Humphrey met as children by a grey, northern sea in post-war Britain. She, freckled and furious; he, quietly studious; both fascinated by the other. Years later, their lives collide as adults and burst into an intense yet brief love affair. Now, after thirty years apart and at the close of the 20th century, their lives are converging once again as they hurtle towards each other by plane and train - their motivations, regrets and decisions laid bare.With the gloriously astute eye that Margaret Drabble is celebrated for, The Sea Lady is an account of first and last love; of the lapping of time at our ankles, gradually eroding and shaping our lives.

Novel - Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university campus. A self-appointed revolutionary hero, Howard always comes out on top. And Malcolm Bradbury dissects him in this savagely funny novel that has been universally acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of the decade.

Perec was a leading exponent of French literary surrealism who found humour - and pathos - in the human need for classification. Thoughts of Sorts is itself unclassifiable, a unique collection of philosophical riffs on his obsession with lists, puzzles, catalogues, and taxonomies. Introduced by Margaret Drabble.

One of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation, Margaret Drabble is an unmatched observer of postwar English lives, portraying social change, sexual liberation, landscape, class and the messy complications of human relationships with intricacy and honesty. In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany.

The colorful, controversial life story of Angus Wilson--one of the most brilliant writers to emerge after World War II--is captured by acclaimed novelist Margaret Drabble. A master chronicler of the foibles of English life, Wilson emerges as an artist of enormous courage, one of the very few who, even in the 1940s, lived as an open homosexual.

An original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular jigsaws, which have offered her and many others relief from melancholy and depression.The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws is an original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular jigsaws, which have offered her and many others relief from melancholy and depression. Alongside curious facts and discoveries about jigsaw puzzles — did you know that the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a boom in puzzle sales? — Drabble introduces us to her beloved Auntie Phyl, and describes childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first trip to London together, the books they read, the jigsaws they completed. She offers penetrating sketches of her parents, her siblings, and her children; she shares her thoughts on the importance of childhood play, on art and writing, on aging and memory. And she does so with her customary intelligence, energy, and wit. This is a memoir like no other.

Poet Jane Gray, whose husband has left her shortly before the birth of their second child, falls passionately in love with James, the husband of Lucy - Jane's cousin and her friend. Their adulterous affair remains secret until a tragic accident exposes it to the world and they have to face the consequences! The Waterfall is a powerful novel about sexual awakening and obsession - and the violent conflicts of maternal and sexual love.

200 years after being plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea, the Red Queen's ghost decides to set the record straight about her extraordinary existence - and Dr Babs Halliwell, with her own complicated past, is the perfect envoy. Why does the Red Queen pick Babs to keep her story alive, and what else does she want from her?

When circumstances compel her to start over late in her life, Candida Wilton moves from a beautiful Georgian house in lovely Suffolk to a two-room, walk-up flat in a run-down building in central London--and begins to pour her soul into a diary. Candida is not exactly destitute. So, is the move perversity, she wonders, a survival test, or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this shabby, menacing, but curiously appealing city? What can happen, at her age, to change her life? In a voice that is pitch-perfect, Candida describes her health club, her social circle, and her attempts at risk-taking in her new life. She begins friendships of sorts with other women-widowed, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations. And then there is a surprise pension-fund windfall.