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Beryl Bainbridge (born on November 21, 1934), is an English novelist.

She has been nominated for the Booker Prize several times, but has never won it. In spite of this, she has been described as one of the greatest living British novelists.

She was born in Liverpool, raised in nearby Formby and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, she spent her early years working as an actress, leaving the theatre to have her first child. Her first novel, was written at this time, it was to be her third published novel, having been rejected by several publishers who found it "repulsive", and "indecent". It was published after which is set in provincial theatre and was adapated as a film by Mike Newell in 1995, starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. She later turned to her family's history, and after that historial novels, such as is a fictionalized account of the last years of the life of Samuel Johnson as seen through the eyes of 'Queeney Thrale', eldest daughter of Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale, and received wide acclaim.

She is a convert to Roman Catholicism.