Beryl (Margaret) Bainbridge Biography

Her later "obsession" to write about her family life developed within the tense household atmosphere created by her mother's preoccupation with class distinction and by her father's manic temper. Bainbridge describes her father as a morose man who loved poetry and radio, a "Willy Loman" salesman who told stories of his past exploits in diamonds, shipping, real estate, cotton, and of his eventual bankruptcy. Hating the present, he taught his daughter the fascination of the past. Before his death, Bainbridge says, she came to love her father; after his death, when she was twenty-three, she learned of his bankruptcy and has endeavored since to understand the point of view of the emotionally volatile man who "paid the bills from a little tin box kept on the table." She attributes her early interest in writing to the stories of Dickens (especially the "awful bits about prisons and slums" read to her by her father), to the pencils and exercise books provided by her mother, and to the family album of snapshots which inspired her "to take verbal photographs of my life and my family." Despite her mother's objections, Bainbridge loved to visit her paternal aunts in their working-class Liverpool neighborhood.