The Millstone
- 2 Jun 2022
- 9781838857134
- £9.99
- 208 pp
- 129×198mm
- 1 May 2014
- 9781782114352
- £7.99
- 208 pp
In a few words
An award-winning novel about the perils of motherhood in a failing healthcare system and a woman’s fight against the social stigma of the Sixties
In a few words
An award-winning novel about the perils of motherhood in a failing healthcare system and a woman’s fight against the social stigma of the Sixties
I have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious. Novels like The Millstone and Jerusalem the Golden have helped me to understand what great writing can be
Sally Rooney
A delight . . . Nothing in Rosamund’s life should go as well as it does; one keeps expecting her to succumb to the cliches of 1960s unmarried motherhood and yet on she goes, skirting disaster, happy despite what anyone believes she ought to feel about her predicament
Francesca Segal
GuardianI have learned so much from Margaret Drabble's work. Her prose is very beautiful, very funny, and at the same time very serious. Novels like The Millstone and Jerusalem the Golden have helped me to understand what great writing can be
Sally Rooney
A delight . . . Nothing in Rosamund’s life should go as well as it does; one keeps expecting her to succumb to the cliches of 1960s unmarried motherhood and yet on she goes, skirting disaster, happy despite what anyone believes she ought to feel about her predicament
Francesca Segal
GuardianMore about
the book
Winner of John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Millstone is a radical celebration of the mother-child relationship. 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.
‘Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine’ – Sunday Times
More about
the book
Winner of John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Millstone is a radical celebration of the mother-child relationship. 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.
‘Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine’ – Sunday Times
A beautiful book – and a momentous one
The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London
A timeless fable about the condition of womanhood . . . Drabble's vision of woman's fate remains challenging, controversial, relevant and profound
Elaine Showalter
Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine
A beautiful book – and a momentous one
The novelist who will have done for late twentieth-century London what Dickens did for Victorian London
A timeless fable about the condition of womanhood . . . Drabble's vision of woman's fate remains challenging, controversial, relevant and profound
Elaine Showalter
Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine
Margaret Drabble
View profileDame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of twenty highly acclaimed novels. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.
Margaret Drabble
View profileDame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of twenty highly acclaimed novels. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.
