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Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer - many say the greatest in recent years - whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty. Her life moved from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, from a life of teaching and obscurity to a blaze of renown. Her novels are short, spare masterpieces: subtle and intensely evocative. The early works draw on Fitzgerald's own experiences - working at the BBC in wartime; at a failing bookshop in Suffolk; at an eccentric stage school - while her later books open out into historical worlds that, magically, she seems to entirely possess.
Despite the late start of her career, Fitzgerald's books won some of the most coveted awards in literature: the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hers is a story of lateness, persistence, and redemption. Now, Hermione Lee, a master biographer and one of Fitzgerald's greatest champions, gives us this remarkable author's unforgettable story.
"Starred Review. Illuminating...Her observations have the vitality of Fitzgerald's own reflective prose, and she writes with sympathy and clarity." - Publishers Weekly
"...Lee, in this scrupulously researched and sympathetic portrait of a worthy and accomplished novelist, makes a strong case for renewed interest in Fitzgerald's works. Highly recommended for anyone interested in well-written literary biographies." - Library Journal
"Another winning biography from Lee. Those who love Fitzgerald's work will tuck this book right next to her volumes." - Kirkus
"Excellent... [Hermione] Lee is a perfect choice as Fitzgerald's biographer. She has done a superb job, capturing an elusive personality and a complex, sometimes rather harrowing story." - The Guardian (UK)
"[A] perfect literary biography... thanks to this sympathetic biography, [Fitzgerald's] afterlife shows signs of becoming finally blessed with understanding, admiration and respect." - The Observer (UK)
"Admirable and perceptive... Hermione Lee non-judgmentally excavates this extraordinary life. Her biography is very good indeed." - The Times (UK)
"Adroitly executed and meticulously researched... insightful... Ms Lee's shrewd examination makes this a riveting biography." - The Economist (UK)
"Lee's absorbing biography is the story of a late starter... [She] is partisan in her project: she means to expose a truth she is certain of - that Fitzgerald is "a great English writer". Her feat is to have woven an involving narrative out of such a skeletal life...Excellent..." - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"This book will hold insights and treats for any admirer of [Fitzgerald's] fiction, and recruit converts to this reticent, witty, ferocious champion of the utterly downtrodden." - The Independent (UK)
This information about Penelope Fitzgerald was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Hermione Lee is a biographer, critic, teacher of literature, and president of Wolfson College, Oxford. Among her many works are literary biographies of Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, and Edith Wharton, and critical books on Elizabeth Bowen and Philip Roth. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was made a CBE in 2003 for services to literature, and a DBE in 2013 for services to literary scholarship. She lives in Oxford and Yorkshire.
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