Penelope Fitzgerald

Starred review from May 12, 2014
Booker Prize–winning novelist Fitzgerald (who died in 2000) once observed, “I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated or, even, profoundly lost.” In this illuminating biography, critic and scholar Lee (The Novels of Virginia Woolf) shows how Fitzgerald’s characters were drawn not just from real life but from her own life. Fitzgerald was born into a remarkably accomplished and well-connected family of clerics and writers: her father was the editor of the humor magazine Punch; an aunt (Winifred Peck) and uncle (Ronald Knox) were well-known authors; and their circle of acquaintances included Evelyn Waugh, Lytton Strachey, A.A. Milne, and other literary celebrities. “Mops” studied at Oxford and wrote radio plays for the BBC during WWII, but lived mostly in the shadow of her accomplished relatives. She got her chance to shine co-editing the cultural magazine World Review with her husband in 1950, but when the magazine folded in 1953, their lives fell apart and the couple and their three children spent years living in poverty aboard decrepit houseboats in London. Fitzgerald began publishing novels in 1977, at age 61, and Lee does an exceptional job of drawing lines of association between the author’s life and fiction. She mines details from Fitzgerald’s journals and notes to fill in the blanks of her famously self-effacing subject. Her observations have the vitality of Fitzgerald’s own reflective prose, and she writes with sympathy and clarity. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency.

October 15, 2014
Lee (President/Wolfson Coll., Oxford; Biography: A Very Short Introduction, 2009) devotes her considerable talents for biography to Penelope Knox Fitzgerald (1916-2000), who didn't publish her first book until the age of 58. The author presents the story of Fitzgerald's initially charmed life and her days at Oxford in the wildly political 1930s, where she discovered John Ruskin and William Morris, her intellectual heroes. She was preceded at Oxford by her mother, her father, the editor of Punch, and his brothers, and that earlier generation set a standard for intellectual writing that Penelope inherited. Her husband, Desmond Fitzgerald, was equally talented but eventually drank away his career and life. For a time, the couple endured abject poverty, at one point living on an old barge in the Thames. Those two years were the subject of the Booker Prize-winning Offshore (1979), which depicted their perpetually damp home, which required a high tide to flush the toilet. That adventure ended when the boat sank with all her notes and papers. Fortunately for readers, Lee had access to the copious notes Fitzgerald made for each of her books. Even for works of pure fiction, she researched the smallest, seemingly insignificant facts. Lee's biography will provide a vivid portrait for those who have not encountered Fitzgerald's work and will prove immensely satisfying for her many fans. The author reproduces pieces of her subject's writing at (occasionally too-) considerable length, but Fitzgerald's mastery of phrasing and the beauty of her work should lead readers back to her books, particularly The Bookshop (1977), which was shortlisted for the Booker, or The Blue Flower, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998. Another winning biography from Lee. Those who love Fitzgerald's work will tuck this book right next to her volumes.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2014
Although, sadly, not as well known in the U.S., Booker Prize winner Fitzgerald (19162000) was a powerhouse of British letters, particularly acclaimed for her novel The Blue Flower (1995). Fitzgerald's wide-ranging career was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she didn't publish her first work, a biography of the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burke-Jones, until she was nearly 60. Her life up to that point, however, provided her with rich source material upon which to draw. Hers was a bohemian existence in London during the 1960s and 1970s, a turbulent time in which she tried to raise a family in near poverty, suffering the misfortunes of her alcoholic husband. Fitzgerald herself once said that biographies should be written about people you love, and clearly, exceptional biographer Lee (Edith Wharton, 2007) is fully enamored of her subject. Extensively researched and exuberantly detailed, Lee's examination delves the depths and heights of this roller-coaster life while meticulously deconstructing each of Fitzgerald's works. A first-rate trove of literary criticism and background that lovers of literature will find invaluable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2014

President of Wolfson College and the biographer of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, among others, Lee takes on a distinguished British writer whose career didn't begin until she was near 60. Fitzgerald went on to win the Booker Prize (for Offshore) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (for The Blue Flower), books that deliver a startling exactitude of insight and language. Rave reviews from Britain for Lee's biography ("brilliant and passionate," the Guardian).

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2014

British biographer Lee, whose previous subjects include Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, here tackles an English novelist who is not as well known as these other writers, at least in the United States. Fitzgerald (1916-2000) did win a Booker Prize, and she had some success during her lifetime, especially from critics and the reading public. While she wrote a number of short novels, as well as a few biographies, her writing career started when she was middle-aged, so her output is comparatively limited. Also, she was very reticent about herself; in interviews she avoided discussing her family and other private information. Lee, who met and interviewed Fitzgerald toward the end of the novelist's life, vividly evokes the times in which Fitzgerald lived, how her experiences shaped her fiction, and how her personality can be gleaned from her works. Fitzgerald could be both charming and critical, sharp-tongued and loving, but eminently worth reading. VERDICT Just as Fitzgerald, in her biography of British poet Charlotte Mew, made her subject come alive, so 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. [See Prepub Alert, 5/12/14.]--Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology, Brooklyn

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.