Early Career
After university, Mantel worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital, and then as a sales assistant in a department store. In 1972, she married Gerald McEwen, a geologist. In 1974 she began writing a novel about the French Revolution, which was later published as A Place of Greater Safety. In 1977, Mantel went to live in Botswana with her husband. Later they spent four years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She published a memoir of this time, Someone to Disturb, in the London Review of Books. She later said that leaving Jeddah felt like "the happiest day of my life".
Her husband Gerald McEwen gave up geology to manage his wife's business affairs.
Read more about this topic: Hilary Mantel
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)