Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She was the author of nine novels, three of which – The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels – were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the prize in 1979 for Offshore. Her last novel, The Blue Flower, was the most admired novel of 1995, chosen no fewer than nineteen times in the press as the 'Book of the Year'. It won America's National Book Critics' Circle Award, and this helped introduce her to a wider international readership.

A superb biographer and critic, Penelope Fitzgerald was also the author of lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (her first book), the poet Charlotte Mew and The Knox Brothers – a study of her remarkable father Edmund Knox, editor of Punch, and his equally remarkable brothers.

Penelope Fitzgerald did not embark on her literary career until the age of sixty. After graduating from Somerville College, Oxford, she worked at the BBC during the war, edited a literary journal, ran a bookshop and taught at various schools, including a theatrical school; her early novels drew upon many of these experiences.

She died in April 2000, at the age of eighty-three.

Fellow novelist Katharine McMahon on Penelope Fitzgerald...

I was introduced to this author just as I began to be published, and I love her wit, and her quirky approach to plot.  The Beginning of Spring is a delicious novel, and it's as if the entire book is pitched towards the very last few lines.  This reads like a small, perfectly formed, Russian novel, but amazingly is written by a very English author.

If you like Penelope Fitzgerald you might also like to read books by Anita Brookner

The Beginning of Spring Penelope Fitzgerald One of Katharine McMahon's favourite books. Highly evocative of time and place this wonderful novel set in the early 20th century is funny, touching and curious. A real treasure of a novel. A "Piece of Passion" from the publisher... Perhaps Penelope Fitzgerald’s... Format: Paperback - Released: 01/09/2003 Lovereading Price: £5.99 - Saving £2.00 (25%)

The Blue Flower Penelope Fitzgerald One of One of Joanna Trollope's favourite books. February 2012 Guest Editor Joanna Trollope on Penelope Fitzgerald... Alas, dead too, but of old age. I had supper with her once, in the converted garage of her daughter’s house, where she... Format: Paperback - Released: 05/08/1996 Lovereading Price: £6.74 - Saving £2.25 (25%)