Penelope Fitzgerald and the Consolation of Fiction

Penelope Fitzgerald and the Consolation of Fiction
Author: Christopher Knight
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 131545100X

Christopher J. Knight’s Penelope Fitzgerald and the Consolation of Fiction is a study of the British author Penelope Fitzgerald (1916 – 2000), attending to her nine novels, especially as viewed through the lens both of "late style" (she published her first novel, The Golden Child, at age sixty) and, in her words, of "consolation, that is, for doubts and fears as well as for naked human loss." As in Shakespeare’s late, religiously inflected, romances, the two concerns coincide; and Fitzgerald’s ostensible comedies are marked by a clear experience of the tragic and the palpable sense of a world that verges on the edge of indifference to human loss. Yet Fitzgerald, her late age pessimism notwithstanding, seeks (with the aid of her own religious understandings), in each of her novels, to wrestle meaning, consolation and even comedy from circumstances not noticeably propitious. Or as she herself memorably spoke of her own "deepest convictions": "I can only say that however close I’ve come, by this time, to nothingness, I have remained true to my deepest convictions—I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as a comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?" The recipient of Britain’s Booker Prize and America’s National Book Critics Circle Award, Penelope Fitzgerald’s reputation as a novelist, and author more generally, has grown, since her death, significantly, to the point that she is now widely judged one of Britain’s finest writers, comparable in worth to the likes of Jane Austen, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald
Author: Hermione Lee
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 491
Release: 2014-11-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385352352

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A Best Book of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography The acclaimed biographer of Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf gives us an intimate portrait of one of the most quietly brilliant novelists of the twentieth century. Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty. She would go on to win some of the most coveted awards in literature—the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in an impeccable match of talent between biographer and subject, Hermione Lee, a master biographer and one of Fitzgerald's greatest champions, gives us this remarkable writer’s story. Lee’s critical expertise is on dazzling display on every page, as it illuminates this extraordinary English life. Fitzgerald, born into an accomplished intellectual family, the granddaughter of two bishops, led a life marked by dramatic twists of fate, moving from a bishop’s palace to a sinking houseboat to a last, late blaze of renown. We see Fitzgerald’s very English childhood in the village of Hampstead; her Oxford years, when she was known as the “blonde bombshell”; her impoverished adulthood as a struggling wife, mother and schoolteacher, raising a family in difficult circumstances; and the long-delayed start to her literary career. Fitzgerald’s early novels draw on her own experiences—working at the BBC in wartime, at a bookshop in Suffolk, at an eccentric stage school in the 1960s—while her later books open out into historical worlds that she, magically, seems to entirely possess: Russia before the Revolution, postwar Italy, Germany in the time of the Romantic writer Novalis. Fitzgerald’s novels are short, spare masterpieces, and Hermione Lee unfurls them here as works of genius. Expertly researched, written out of love and admiration for this wonderful author’s work, Penelope Fitzgerald is literary biography at its finest—an unforgettable story of lateness, persistence and survival.

For the Love of Letters

For the Love of Letters
Author: John O'Connell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1476718814

Remember letters? They were good, weren’t they? The thrill of receiving that battered envelope, all the better for the wait . . . In this richly entertaining book, paper geek John O’Connell puts forward a passionate case for the value of letter-writing in a distracted, technology-obsessed world. Drawing on great examples from the past, he shows that the best letters have much to teach us – Samuel Richardson’s ‘familiar letters’; Wilfred Owen’s outpourings to his mother; the sly observational charms of Jane Austen. And in doing so he reminds us of the kind of letters we would all write if we had the time – the perfect thank-you letter, a truly empathetic condolence letter, and of course the heartfelt declaration of love. Was there a Golden Age of Letters? Why is handwriting so important? Can we ever regain the hallowed slowness of the pre-Twitter era? In answering these questions O’Connell shows how a proper letter is an object to be cherished, its crafting an act of exposure which gives shape and meaning to the chaos of life. *** ‘The nib touches the paper. And instinctively I follow the old formula: address in top right-hand corner; date just beneath it on the left-hand side. My writing looks weird. I hand-write so infrequently these days that I’ve developed a graphic stammer - my brain’s way of registering its impatience and bemusement. What are you doing? Just send an email! I haven’t got all night . . .’

Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald
Author: Hugh Adlington
Publisher: Writers and Their Work
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2018
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0746312946

"First published in 2018 by Liverpool University Press ... on behalf of Northcote House Publishers Ltd"--Title page verso.

Innocence

Innocence
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2013-03-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0544227654

“A delectable comedy of manners” set in 1950s Florence, by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Bookshop (The Boston Globe). It’s 1955, and Italy is still struggling a decade after the end of World War II. So are the Ridolfis, a Florentine family of long and fading noble lineage. Like their decrepit villa, they’ve seen better days. Only eighteen-year-old Chiara shows anything like vitality—however impulsive and perilously naïve. Chiara has set her heart and her future on Salvatore Rossi, a brilliant, penniless young doctor and bull-headed son of a Communist, who has erased both politics and romance from his list of priorities. With her plans stymied, Chiara calls on her resourceful and meddlesome British girlfriend, Barney, to help make an impossible match. Now, out of good intentions and the most innocent of instincts, two guileless friends are going to make a series of astonishingly wrong moves in the name of love. From a winner of multiple major literary awards who was called “the best English novelist of her time” by Julian Barnes, Innocence is a novel “not just about Italians in love but of living and loving for all humans” (The Times). “As intoxicating as a shot of aged brandy.” —The Washington Post

The Gate of Angels

The Gate of Angels
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 241
Release: 1998-04-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547524730

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize: A novel of two “wonderful characters” who meet by accident in Edwardian England, and fall inconveniently in love (The Washington Post). In 1912, rational scientist Fred Fairly, one of Cambridge’s best and brightest, crashes his bike and wakes up in bed with a stranger—fellow casualty Daisy Saunders, a charming, pretty, and almost pathologically generous working-class nurse. So begins a series of complications—not only of the heart but also of the head—as Fred and Daisy take up each other’s education and turn each other’s philosophies upside down. From the recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors, this story of an unlikely and possibly doomed romance is a “deft comedy of manners . . . Fitzgerald’s elegant prose shines with intelligence and subtle wit . . . Her flair for well-drawn eccentric characters will appeal to fans of Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym” (Library Journal). “A singular accomplishment.” —Boston Globe “Powerfully bewitching.” —Los Angeles Times

In Two Minds

In Two Minds
Author: Kate Bassett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1849437386

In Two Minds is the first comprehensive biography of Jonathan Miller – the story of one of post-war Britain's most intriguing polymaths. Descended from immigrants who fled Tsarist anti-Semitism to become shopkeepers in Ireland and London's East End, Miller was born into an intellectual milieu, between Bloomsbury and Harley Street – the son of a novelist and a leading child psychiatrist. Miller trained as adoctor but then forged a career as a stellar comedian and as a world-renowned theatre and opera director. He is a controversial humorist, public intellectual and TV personality. As a star in the groundbreaking satirical revue Beyond the Fringe, he shot to fame alongside Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett. His expertise and interests encompass many areas, from medicine (he wrote and presented the hugely acclaimed BBC documentary series The Body in Question) to the history of art, Mozart, atheism and the nature of laughter. Jonathan Miller is one of the most multi-talented Britons of his generation, celebrated for his dazzling intelligence and anti-establishmentarian wit. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this is an entertaining and illuminating portrait of a fascinatingly complex man.

The Blue Flower

The Blue Flower
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1997
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780395859971

Romance between the poet Novalis and his fiancée Sophie, newly introduced by Candia McWilliam. The year is 1794 and Fritz, passionate, idealistic and brilliant, is seeking his fathers permission to announce his engagement to his hearts desire: twelve-year-old Sophie. His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal. What can he be thinking?

The Bookshop

The Bookshop
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
Publisher: HarperCollins publishers
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2018
Genre: Booksellers and bookseeking
ISBN: 9780008263027

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.