Editing Beryl Bainbridge (section)

===Subsequent years===
In the following year (1954), Bainbridge married artist Austin Davies. In 1958, she attempted suicide by putting her head in a gas oven.<ref name=higgins/> The two divorced soon after, leaving Bainbridge a single mother of two&nbsp;children. Bainbridge spent her early years working as an actress, and she appeared in one 1961 episode of the soap opera ''[[Coronation Street]]'' playing an anti-nuclear protester. She later had a third child by [[Alan Sharp]], the actress [[Rudi Davies]] (born 1965).<ref name=hastings/> Sharp, a Scotsman, was at the start of his career as novelist and screenwriter; Bainbridge would later let it be thought that he was her second husband; in truth, they never married but the relationship encouraged her on her way to fiction.

To help fill her time, Bainbridge began to write, primarily based on incidents from her childhood.  Her first novel, ''[[Harriet Said...]]'', was rejected by several publishers, one of whom found the central characters "repulsive almost beyond belief".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jun/01/fiction.berylbainbridge|title=Filling in the Gaps|date=31 May 2002|first=Nicholas|last=Wroe|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> It was eventually published in 1972, four years after her third novel (''Another Part of the Wood''). Her second and third novels were published (1967/68) and were received well by critics although they failed to earn much money.<ref name=preston/><ref>{{citation|last=Brown|first=Craig|title=Beryl Bainbridge: an ideal writer's childhood|newspaper=[[The Times]]|date=4 November 1978|page=14}}.</ref> She wrote and published seven more novels during the 1970s, of which the fifth, ''[[Injury Time (novel)|Injury Time]]'', was awarded the [[Whitbread prize]] for best novel in 1977.

In the late 1970s, she wrote a screenplay based on her novel ''[[Sweet William (novel)|Sweet William]]''. [[Sweet William (film)|The resulting film]], starring [[Sam Waterston]], was released in 1980.<ref name=canby>{{citation|last=Canby|first=Vincent|title=Sweet William (1979)|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=18 June 1982|url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D05E6DA103BF93BA25755C0A964948260|access-date=17 January 2008}}</ref>

From 1980 onwards, eight more novels appeared. The 1989 novel, ''[[An Awfully Big Adventure (novel)|An Awfully Big Adventure]]'', was adapted into [[An Awfully Big Adventure|a film in 1995]], starring [[Alan Rickman]] and [[Hugh Grant]].

In the 1990s, Bainbridge turned to historical fiction. These novels continued to be popular with critics, but this time, were also commercially successful.<ref name=preston/> Among her historical fiction novels are ''[[Every Man for Himself (novel)|Every Man for Himself]]'', about the 1912 Titanic disaster, for which Bainbridge won the [[1996 Whitbread Awards]] prize for best novel, and ''[[Master Georgie]]'', set during the [[Crimean War]], for which she won the 1998 [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]] for fiction. Her final novel, ''[[According to Queeney]]'', is a fictionalized account of the last years of the life of [[Samuel Johnson]] as seen through the eyes of [[Hester Maria Elphinstone, Viscountess Keith|Queeney Thrale]], eldest daughter of [[Henry Thrale|Henry]] and [[Hester Thrale]]. ''The Observer'' referred to it as a "...highly intelligent, sophisticated and entertaining novel".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/26/fiction.berylbainbridge|first=Adam |last=Sisman|title=Madness and the mistress|newspaper=[[The Observer]]|date=26 August 2001|access-date=8 May 2013}}</ref>

From the 1990s, Bainbridge also served as a theatre critic for the monthly magazine ''[[The Oldie]]''. Her reviews rarely contained negative content, and were usually published after the play had closed.<ref name=preston/> A collection of reviews 1992-2002 were published in the book "Front Row: Evenings at the Theatre". The introduction described her theatrical experience, from winning a talent competition to assistant stage manager in Liverpool to occasional acting roles.