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Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
Intimate, perceptive, critically acute, funny and moving, this is the first full biography of one of the finest English novelists of the last century.
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms. Her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and subtle. The first group of these drew on her own experiences -- a boat on the Thames in the 1960s; the BBC in war time; a failing bookshop in a Suffolk; an eccentric stage-school. The later ones opened out to encompass historical worlds which, magically, she seemed to possess Russia before the Revolution; post-war Italy; Germany in the time of the Romantic writer Novalis.
Fitzgerald's life is as various, as cryptic and as intriguing as her fiction. It spans most of the twentieth century, and moves from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, from a demanding intellectual family to hardship and poverty, from a life of teaching and obscurity to a blaze of renown. She started publishing at sixty and became famous at eighty. This is a story of lateness, patience and a private form of heroism.
Loved and admired, and increasingly recognised as one of the outstanding novelists of her time, she remains, also, mysterious and intriguing. She liked to mislead people with a good imitation of an absent-minded old lady; but under that scatty front were a steel-sharp brain and an imagination of wonderful reach. This brilliant biography -- by a biographer whom Fitzgerald herself admired -- pursues her life, her writing, and her secret self, with fascinated interest.
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms. Her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and subtle. The first group of these drew on her own experiences -- a boat on the Thames in the 1960s; the BBC in war time; a failing bookshop in a Suffolk; an eccentric stage-school. The later ones opened out to encompass historical worlds which, magically, she seemed to possess Russia before the Revolution; post-war Italy; Germany in the time of the Romantic writer Novalis.
Fitzgerald's life is as various, as cryptic and as intriguing as her fiction. It spans most of the twentieth century, and moves from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, from a demanding intellectual family to hardship and poverty, from a life of teaching and obscurity to a blaze of renown. She started publishing at sixty and became famous at eighty. This is a story of lateness, patience and a private form of heroism.
Loved and admired, and increasingly recognised as one of the outstanding novelists of her time, she remains, also, mysterious and intriguing. She liked to mislead people with a good imitation of an absent-minded old lady; but under that scatty front were a steel-sharp brain and an imagination of wonderful reach. This brilliant biography -- by a biographer whom Fitzgerald herself admired -- pursues her life, her writing, and her secret self, with fascinated interest.
508 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2013
About the author
Hermione Lee
73 books136 followersHermione Lee grew up in London and was educated at Oxford. She began her academic career as a lecturer at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va (Instructor, 1970-1971) and at Liverpool University (Lecturer, 1971-1977). She taught at the University of York from 1977, where over twenty years she was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of English Literature. From 1998-2008 she was the Goldsmiths' Chair of English Literature and Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford. In 2008 Lee was elected President of Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's and St Cross Colleges, Oxford. She has Honorary Doctorates from Liverpool and York Universities. In 2003 she was made a Commander of the British Empire for Services to Literature.
Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's and St Cross Colleges, Oxford. She has Honorary Doctorates from Liverpool and York Universities. In 2003 she was made a Commander of the British Empire for Services to Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
November 30, 2019
Not sure why I bought this as I'm not a lover of biographers unless I feel some deep connection with the subject which isn't true of Penelope Fitzgerald. The thing about her that fascinated me was a mistaken idea on my part that she was an ordinary housewife who discovered a rare talent for writing novels late in her life. I assumed, like Kafka and Mansfield, she had to fight against a rather mediocre family background to become a writer. Turns out this is far from true. She came from a hugely privileged family which abounded in writers and scholars. She faced virtually no struggle against odds. In fact, becoming a writer was probably the easiest choice for her. I soon began to lose interest in all the OCD gathered detail Lee documents to give a broad picture of her family background. And the more I read about Fitzgerald the less I found myself warming to her. I lost interest in this rather overly meticulous old school biography and abandoned it about a third of the way in. Not that it's in any way bad; it just didn't interest me.
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November 3, 2019Hermione Lee approaches Penelope Fitzgerald's life mostly in a chronological way, starting off with her family background - she was the granddaughter of two bishops and they where only two peaks of two religious families. For Lee, Fitzgerald has to be understood in the context of her family, religious, but indiscriminately Christian, so Catholic, Quaker, Evangelical. Their religiosity spilt over into an interest in social questions and the relief of poverty, they were Liberals, centre-left in modern terms. They were also evasive, had difficulties in communicating their emotions, many in the family had literary ambitions, all were intellectually ambitious and competitive (perhaps this was the cause of the religiosity).
More immediately Fitzgerald's father was the Editor of the magazine Punch, her mother died when Penelope was eighteen, she went to Oxford University, she was already then planning a comic novel featuring characters based on J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but for most of her life fiction writing was completely absent. After Oxford she did some reviewing for her father and got married before WWII to Desmond Fitzgerald. He served in North Africa and then Italy, after the war he joined the bar as a barrister but his war time experiences left him waking up at night screaming, he also was not one for communicating his emotions and coped with his reactions to the experience of war by drinking (this eventually was to end badly, and getting to the end was not pretty either). Penelope, during the war, worked for a while in the BBC - an experience eventually reworked in Human Voices. Reunited after the war they had three children (in an amongst some miscarriages) Valpy, Christina and Maria. Desmond through various connections was appointed editor of The World Review, Hermione Lee is of the opinion that Penelope did most of the actual editing and commissioning as well as contributing the occasional piece - but the magazine's archives were not available to her and the journal itself long defunct. This was possibly bad luck for the couple as Desmond was not concentrating on developing his legal career and in an attempt to economise the family moved to Southwold with Desmond spending the week in London and travelling to Suffolk for the weekends.
Southwold became Hardborough in The Bookshop, Penelope worked in the town's only bookshop - they sold Lolita when it came out and they had a resident poltergeist, however in addition Penelope unlike Florence in the novel had her husband part time and the children (whose clothes she made - another economy measure), the bookshop folded the stock piled up on the streets and sold off.
The family returned to London and lived on a barge moored on the south bank of the Thames, the situation was much as in her later novel Offshore but grimmer, Desmond's drinking was more than the household could afford and so he paid for his drinking by stealing cheques from his legal chambers and cashing them in nearby pubs. I believe I mentioned that Penelope and husband were both non-communicative, as a family they were also attempting to live an upper middle class lifestyle without the income to afford it - they sent their son Valpy to the private Westminster school for an entire two terms, presumably juggling bills to afford it before he was taken on by Desmond's old school the Catholic Downside Abbey (the fees were paid for them by the Old Boys association), eventually Desmond's chambers noticed that their income was not equal to their billing, Desmond ended up pleading guilty to theft in Court, the Judge taking into account his admission of guilt and distinguished war record was lenient, the Bar was less so and he was struck off. However by then Penelope had started to work as a teacher first at the Italia Conti Stage school - an experience fated to be reworked into At Freddie's and then at two institutions preparing children for Oxbridge entrance exams (A.S. Byatt was also a teacher at one of them), she remained working at one of them until she was seventy. Then the barge sunk .
Luckily as it happened the welfare state meant that Penelope and the girls were taken into emergency housing for a few mouths and then into a large three bedroomed council flat in South London (December 1964) . Slowly the family life settled down, Desmond got a clerical job with the (also now defunct) Lunn Poly travel agency. The children one by one qualified for university (with Mother Fitzgerald writing some of their homework for them) Then in turn each child got married and moved out. The engagement of her son hit her hardest and she spent a lot of time ignoring her daughter-in-law, though eventually she found her sons-in-law acceptable enough to talk to.
Desmond developed bowel cancer, he lived for a year after it was operated on, during that time, Fitzgerald started work on The Golden Child , she wrote it, she said, to entertain her husband and his favourite novels were detective stories.
Well that is an awful lot to write about her life, and it was an awful lot to read as well. Before picking up this volume I had read five of her nine novels and as a reader I wanted to know where did her creativity come from, why did she write, and what did she read. Hermione Lee's answer is that her writing flows out of her life, the first five books of her fiction in an obvious way, the last four more subtly so. Fitzgerald herself said that she started writing biographies to earn money and then fiction to fund writing biographies, If you wanted to earn money through writing would you start by writing biographies of Edward Burne-Jones and the Knox Brothers (her father and uncles)?
Her early out put of five books in four years is not remarkable compared to George Simenon's productivity, but suggests to me a tense coil of creativity that was suddenly released.
A feature of her character was her difficulty in expressing her emotion coupled with a desire to keep up appearances. Her life, I felt was not extraordinary, things happened, many were deeply painful, and I felt were distinctly lonely experiences for her, the alcoholism of her husband, the cruel loss of her son to marriage, not having enough money to get by and juggling bills. This it seemed to me found expression in her creative writing, firstly through fictionalised versions of her own experiences and then in the later novels she leaves behind her autobiographical experience (mostly, at least she is not telling part of her own life story) and expresses in fiction her feelings and attitudes with the exception of her religious views which she seems to have soft pedalled - once she was earning money from her writing she went to the Holy Land (1992) and was rebaptised in the river Jordan but at the same time felt that her evangelical upbringing was not a positive in her life. If I think of Muriel Spark then I prefer Fitzgerald's novels. Spark is brilliant, her novels shards of glass, obsidian headed arrows so sharp that they pass through me cleanly leaving me dead (or at least with a punctured lung). Fitzgerald's writing is also intelligent but has more heart, I feel she makes me engage with the sufferings of others - and not only with sympathetic characters either.
Fitzgerald was not one to embrace her grandchildren (or her children), and her children felt that they had never done well enough to please her, her son had a series of anxiety attacks in the 1990s that came down to his fear of being seen as a failure in his mother's eyes (p.165 & p.358). Lee tells us that Fitzgerald was evasive, but literature allowed her to express herself, but she has a indirect style, the reader often has to work and this leads to engagement in the text until you are eyebrow deep in her storytelling and breathing through a snorkel (if you remembered to put one on).
Pressed on her books of the century she suggested Conrad The Secret Agent, Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes Kafka's The Trial and Sveto's Confessions of Zeno, else where in the biography are mentioned Alberto Moravia, Tolstoy's late short stories, Thomas Mann's novellas and Samuel Beckett, particularly Molloy, in many ways this seems an unexceptional list, but it flashes like a beacon when I compare it with Susan Hill's list in Howard's End is on the Landing. It also makes sense - pessimism, a certain inwardness, a particular morality.
Of the biographer Hermione Lee, Fitzgerald wrote in 1989 "Hermione Lee was very kind, although she clearly thinks I am hopeless about Feminism , and says this is the generation gap" (p.380). My feeling on completion was that it all made sense, it was congruent with what I had read of Fitzgerald, there were no great revelations, just the snapping of jigsaw pieces together.
There are also breakout chapters to consider Innocence, The Beginning of Spring, Gate of Angels, and The Blue Flower.
More immediately Fitzgerald's father was the Editor of the magazine Punch, her mother died when Penelope was eighteen, she went to Oxford University, she was already then planning a comic novel featuring characters based on J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but for most of her life fiction writing was completely absent. After Oxford she did some reviewing for her father and got married before WWII to Desmond Fitzgerald. He served in North Africa and then Italy, after the war he joined the bar as a barrister but his war time experiences left him waking up at night screaming, he also was not one for communicating his emotions and coped with his reactions to the experience of war by drinking (this eventually was to end badly, and getting to the end was not pretty either). Penelope, during the war, worked for a while in the BBC - an experience eventually reworked in Human Voices. Reunited after the war they had three children (in an amongst some miscarriages) Valpy, Christina and Maria. Desmond through various connections was appointed editor of The World Review, Hermione Lee is of the opinion that Penelope did most of the actual editing and commissioning as well as contributing the occasional piece - but the magazine's archives were not available to her and the journal itself long defunct. This was possibly bad luck for the couple as Desmond was not concentrating on developing his legal career and in an attempt to economise the family moved to Southwold with Desmond spending the week in London and travelling to Suffolk for the weekends.
Southwold became Hardborough in The Bookshop, Penelope worked in the town's only bookshop - they sold Lolita when it came out and they had a resident poltergeist, however in addition Penelope unlike Florence in the novel had her husband part time and the children (whose clothes she made - another economy measure), the bookshop folded the stock piled up on the streets and sold off.
The family returned to London and lived on a barge moored on the south bank of the Thames, the situation was much as in her later novel Offshore but grimmer, Desmond's drinking was more than the household could afford and so he paid for his drinking by stealing cheques from his legal chambers and cashing them in nearby pubs. I believe I mentioned that Penelope and husband were both non-communicative, as a family they were also attempting to live an upper middle class lifestyle without the income to afford it - they sent their son Valpy to the private Westminster school for an entire two terms, presumably juggling bills to afford it before he was taken on by Desmond's old school the Catholic Downside Abbey (the fees were paid for them by the Old Boys association), eventually Desmond's chambers noticed that their income was not equal to their billing, Desmond ended up pleading guilty to theft in Court, the Judge taking into account his admission of guilt and distinguished war record was lenient, the Bar was less so and he was struck off. However by then Penelope had started to work as a teacher first at the Italia Conti Stage school - an experience fated to be reworked into At Freddie's and then at two institutions preparing children for Oxbridge entrance exams (A.S. Byatt was also a teacher at one of them), she remained working at one of them until she was seventy. Then the barge sunk .
Luckily as it happened the welfare state meant that Penelope and the girls were taken into emergency housing for a few mouths and then into a large three bedroomed council flat in South London (December 1964) . Slowly the family life settled down, Desmond got a clerical job with the (also now defunct) Lunn Poly travel agency. The children one by one qualified for university (with Mother Fitzgerald writing some of their homework for them) Then in turn each child got married and moved out. The engagement of her son hit her hardest and she spent a lot of time ignoring her daughter-in-law, though eventually she found her sons-in-law acceptable enough to talk to.
Desmond developed bowel cancer, he lived for a year after it was operated on, during that time, Fitzgerald started work on The Golden Child , she wrote it, she said, to entertain her husband and his favourite novels were detective stories.
Well that is an awful lot to write about her life, and it was an awful lot to read as well. Before picking up this volume I had read five of her nine novels and as a reader I wanted to know where did her creativity come from, why did she write, and what did she read. Hermione Lee's answer is that her writing flows out of her life, the first five books of her fiction in an obvious way, the last four more subtly so. Fitzgerald herself said that she started writing biographies to earn money and then fiction to fund writing biographies, If you wanted to earn money through writing would you start by writing biographies of Edward Burne-Jones and the Knox Brothers (her father and uncles)?
Her early out put of five books in four years is not remarkable compared to George Simenon's productivity, but suggests to me a tense coil of creativity that was suddenly released.
A feature of her character was her difficulty in expressing her emotion coupled with a desire to keep up appearances. Her life, I felt was not extraordinary, things happened, many were deeply painful, and I felt were distinctly lonely experiences for her, the alcoholism of her husband, the cruel loss of her son to marriage, not having enough money to get by and juggling bills. This it seemed to me found expression in her creative writing, firstly through fictionalised versions of her own experiences and then in the later novels she leaves behind her autobiographical experience (mostly, at least she is not telling part of her own life story) and expresses in fiction her feelings and attitudes with the exception of her religious views which she seems to have soft pedalled - once she was earning money from her writing she went to the Holy Land (1992) and was rebaptised in the river Jordan but at the same time felt that her evangelical upbringing was not a positive in her life. If I think of Muriel Spark then I prefer Fitzgerald's novels. Spark is brilliant, her novels shards of glass, obsidian headed arrows so sharp that they pass through me cleanly leaving me dead (or at least with a punctured lung). Fitzgerald's writing is also intelligent but has more heart, I feel she makes me engage with the sufferings of others - and not only with sympathetic characters either.
Fitzgerald was not one to embrace her grandchildren (or her children), and her children felt that they had never done well enough to please her, her son had a series of anxiety attacks in the 1990s that came down to his fear of being seen as a failure in his mother's eyes (p.165 & p.358). Lee tells us that Fitzgerald was evasive, but literature allowed her to express herself, but she has a indirect style, the reader often has to work and this leads to engagement in the text until you are eyebrow deep in her storytelling and breathing through a snorkel (if you remembered to put one on).
Pressed on her books of the century she suggested Conrad The Secret Agent, Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes Kafka's The Trial and Sveto's Confessions of Zeno, else where in the biography are mentioned Alberto Moravia, Tolstoy's late short stories, Thomas Mann's novellas and Samuel Beckett, particularly Molloy, in many ways this seems an unexceptional list, but it flashes like a beacon when I compare it with Susan Hill's list in Howard's End is on the Landing. It also makes sense - pessimism, a certain inwardness, a particular morality.
Of the biographer Hermione Lee, Fitzgerald wrote in 1989 "Hermione Lee was very kind, although she clearly thinks I am hopeless about Feminism , and says this is the generation gap" (p.380). My feeling on completion was that it all made sense, it was congruent with what I had read of Fitzgerald, there were no great revelations, just the snapping of jigsaw pieces together.
There are also breakout chapters to consider Innocence, The Beginning of Spring, Gate of Angels, and The Blue Flower.
January 18, 2014
For two decades I have wondered how this great novelist, clearly a genius, author of almost nothing but masterpieces (any longish list of my favourite novels would be incomplete without The Blue Flower, The Beginning of Spring, Innocence, The Bookshop, and The Gate of Angels - cast the net just a little wider to embrace all of Fitzgerald's fiction) could have come to writing and publishing for the first time on the eve of her sixtieth birthday. Now, thanks to this magnificent biography, I feel I have lived (and, sadly, died) alongside this true original as she navigated her perilous life, a story with its roots embedded deeply in the nineteenth-century and spanning the twentieth almost in its entirety. Heart-rending years keep Fitzgerald from devotion to her art, and the pages where that art finally flowers make for tremendous reading. Hermione Lee's study of her subject's novels and biographies is exquisite, and her knowledge of the worlds through which Fitzgerald and her forebears move seems peerless. As well as a desire to reread Fitzgerald, Lee's book has opened up fresh avenues in my reading life - I'm now curious about the poetry of Charlotte Mew, for instance, and must finally make time for a novel called The Restraint of Beasts. The last pages of this book offer a wonderful insight into the biographer's art, as Hermione Lee steps onto the empty stage, having just laid Penelope to rest.
August 13, 2015
A thorough and sympathetic appreciation of an underrated author, and another marvellously detailed biography from Lee. Fitzgerald is, like Diana Athill, a reassuring examples of an author who did not find success until well into middle age. Although she always guarded literary ambitions, she was not able to pursue her work wholeheartedly until she had reared three children and nursed her hapless husband through his last illness.
The approach here is largely chronological, though Lee pauses at key moments to investigate the biographical origins of each of Fitzgerald’s books (with perhaps too much in the way of plot summary). One of the pleasures of this book is seeing the flourishing of a repressed woman. Readers unfamiliar with Fitzgerald’s fiction will get a full picture of her recurring themes and characters. Indeed, one need not have read anything else by or about Fitzgerald to enjoy this masterful biography.
See my full review at Nudge.
The approach here is largely chronological, though Lee pauses at key moments to investigate the biographical origins of each of Fitzgerald’s books (with perhaps too much in the way of plot summary). One of the pleasures of this book is seeing the flourishing of a repressed woman. Readers unfamiliar with Fitzgerald’s fiction will get a full picture of her recurring themes and characters. Indeed, one need not have read anything else by or about Fitzgerald to enjoy this masterful biography.
See my full review at Nudge.
March 5, 2015
Penelope Fitzgerald. Hermione Lee. I admire the work of Fitzgerald, but to be honest I read this biography as much for who wrote as for the subject. I think Lee's a terrific biographer. She doesn't disappoint here.
Fitzgerald was a writer who led a conservative, traditional life as wife, mother, and teacher for most of here life. Even after she began to write late in life--her first work was published at sixty--she preferred to give the impression of one who was colorless and not particularly learned. Lee shows us the real Fitzgerald, one different from the persona she advanced.
Fitzgerald herself began writing as a biographer--of her family, of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet Charlotte Mew. Her early novels, like The Bookshop and the Booker Prize-winning Offshore, were autobiographical. Late in her career and late in life she turned her fiction to historical subjects. The strength of the life Lee's written rests on the extensive attention she gives to each of Fitzgerald's books. Some of the glosses are a chapter in length, all are complete with analysis and summary, motivation and meaning. The discussion of the writing is as fine as the comprehensive detail given to the facts and events of the life itself. As I knew she would, Lee does justice to a wonderful novelist, an important British novelist who wrote for the world. She didn't become well-known until she was elderly, but Lee's study reveals her as important her whole life.
Fitzgerald was a writer who led a conservative, traditional life as wife, mother, and teacher for most of here life. Even after she began to write late in life--her first work was published at sixty--she preferred to give the impression of one who was colorless and not particularly learned. Lee shows us the real Fitzgerald, one different from the persona she advanced.
Fitzgerald herself began writing as a biographer--of her family, of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet Charlotte Mew. Her early novels, like The Bookshop and the Booker Prize-winning Offshore, were autobiographical. Late in her career and late in life she turned her fiction to historical subjects. The strength of the life Lee's written rests on the extensive attention she gives to each of Fitzgerald's books. Some of the glosses are a chapter in length, all are complete with analysis and summary, motivation and meaning. The discussion of the writing is as fine as the comprehensive detail given to the facts and events of the life itself. As I knew she would, Lee does justice to a wonderful novelist, an important British novelist who wrote for the world. She didn't become well-known until she was elderly, but Lee's study reveals her as important her whole life.
September 22, 2016
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000), says the blurb of Hermione Lee’s new biography, ‘was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms’. Lee adds to this, stating that ‘her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and subtle’. Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize for her novella Offshore in 1979, and I am certain that great swathes of her fans have looked forward to the publication of a book which focuses solely upon her life. The author named Lee as a biographer whom she admired, and so it seems fitting that she was tasked by Fitzgerald’s own family to immortalise their beloved Penelope in such a way.
Fitzgerald first became a published writer at the age of sixty, and did not reach the dizzy heights of fame until she was an octogenarian. She became the author of ‘nine short novels, three biographies, some remarkable stories, many fine essays and reviews, and many letters’. Lee states that throughout her writing, Fitzgerald: ‘wrote about her own life, but kept herself carefully concealed’. Lee has split the biography into eighteen different chapters, which range from ‘Learning to Read’ to ‘Last Words’. The writing style which is used throughout has been stylistically rendered as though to fit a novel, in that it is ultimately pretty, and has clearly been well thought out. In this sense, the wealth of information which has been presented throughout does not seem at all dry, and is not difficult to absorb.
Fitzgerald had rather a sad beginning. She was born in the middle of the First World War, in which her father was ‘shot in the back by a sniper at the Battle of Passchendaele, [and was] then found in a shell-hole in a pool of blood’, and her maternal grandfather passed away when she was just two years old. At the start of the book – as with most biographies which set out the lives of the ancestors of their subjects – there are rather a lot of people introduced, and it is necessary to flip back and forth between the text and the extensive family tree which has been included at the beginning of the volume. Fitzgerald hails from, says Lee, an ‘exceptional and eccentric clan’, who ‘left a strong mark upon her life and her writing’. In the Knox family, ‘everyone was publishing, or about to publish, something’. Indeed, there are some famous names in her extended family – the author Winifred Peck is an aunt, her father Eddie wrote for Punch, and her stepmother was the daughter of E.H. Shepard, most famous for illustrating the Winnie-the-Pooh tales. Her mother, too, contributed to the English Literature Series, which published ‘editions of annotated, abridged, classic texts’.
Quotes have been included throughout, both from Fitzgerald’s books, and the letters of her family and friends. Lee also paraphrases a lot of Fitzgerald’s work, which gives a real feel for the inspiration she took from her own life and interests, and subsequently fed into her fiction. The entirety is sprinkled with Fitzgerald’s memories – The Poetry Bookshop in Bloomsbury, where she distinctly remembers an afternoon reading of Walter de la Mare’s poetry (‘he was the man who had written Peacock Pie. That was enough’); of being sent to prep school in Eastbourne, an experience which she hated; being taught at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was given lectures by both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis; her first job at Punch, writing film reviews; her move to the BBC during the Second World War; becoming married: ‘To Hampstead neighbours, to friends and colleague, they seemed an enviable, talented couple with the world at their feet’; hardships, and her teaching career.
Penelope Fitzgerald is an admirable biography, and one which has evidently been thoroughly researched down to the last detail. Lee excels at her craft, and it is no wonder that the subject of this biography so admired her. Whilst reviewing Lee’s earlier book, Virginia Woolf, Fitzgerald wrote: ‘Lee’s book is not only very good, but very necessary’. The same can surely be said here.
Fitzgerald first became a published writer at the age of sixty, and did not reach the dizzy heights of fame until she was an octogenarian. She became the author of ‘nine short novels, three biographies, some remarkable stories, many fine essays and reviews, and many letters’. Lee states that throughout her writing, Fitzgerald: ‘wrote about her own life, but kept herself carefully concealed’. Lee has split the biography into eighteen different chapters, which range from ‘Learning to Read’ to ‘Last Words’. The writing style which is used throughout has been stylistically rendered as though to fit a novel, in that it is ultimately pretty, and has clearly been well thought out. In this sense, the wealth of information which has been presented throughout does not seem at all dry, and is not difficult to absorb.
Fitzgerald had rather a sad beginning. She was born in the middle of the First World War, in which her father was ‘shot in the back by a sniper at the Battle of Passchendaele, [and was] then found in a shell-hole in a pool of blood’, and her maternal grandfather passed away when she was just two years old. At the start of the book – as with most biographies which set out the lives of the ancestors of their subjects – there are rather a lot of people introduced, and it is necessary to flip back and forth between the text and the extensive family tree which has been included at the beginning of the volume. Fitzgerald hails from, says Lee, an ‘exceptional and eccentric clan’, who ‘left a strong mark upon her life and her writing’. In the Knox family, ‘everyone was publishing, or about to publish, something’. Indeed, there are some famous names in her extended family – the author Winifred Peck is an aunt, her father Eddie wrote for Punch, and her stepmother was the daughter of E.H. Shepard, most famous for illustrating the Winnie-the-Pooh tales. Her mother, too, contributed to the English Literature Series, which published ‘editions of annotated, abridged, classic texts’.
Quotes have been included throughout, both from Fitzgerald’s books, and the letters of her family and friends. Lee also paraphrases a lot of Fitzgerald’s work, which gives a real feel for the inspiration she took from her own life and interests, and subsequently fed into her fiction. The entirety is sprinkled with Fitzgerald’s memories – The Poetry Bookshop in Bloomsbury, where she distinctly remembers an afternoon reading of Walter de la Mare’s poetry (‘he was the man who had written Peacock Pie. That was enough’); of being sent to prep school in Eastbourne, an experience which she hated; being taught at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was given lectures by both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis; her first job at Punch, writing film reviews; her move to the BBC during the Second World War; becoming married: ‘To Hampstead neighbours, to friends and colleague, they seemed an enviable, talented couple with the world at their feet’; hardships, and her teaching career.
Penelope Fitzgerald is an admirable biography, and one which has evidently been thoroughly researched down to the last detail. Lee excels at her craft, and it is no wonder that the subject of this biography so admired her. Whilst reviewing Lee’s earlier book, Virginia Woolf, Fitzgerald wrote: ‘Lee’s book is not only very good, but very necessary’. The same can surely be said here.
February 28, 2015
This is by far one of the best written biographies I have ever read. There never came a dull, boring point where I wanted to stop reading, as has happened in other biographies I have read. Of course, Penelope Fitzgerald's life is far from dull, having grown up fairly well off to eventually finding she and her family living on a converted coal barge that after two years sank, taking the majority of their belongings. I was inspired by the fact that she was 58 before she published her first book and was a prolific writer until the age of 79 when she said she just couldn't come up with any new ideas. I am now on a mission to read her novels, and have already finished The Bookshop, an excellent little read. If you like a good biography, I highly suggest this one! I plan to definitely read more of Hermione Lee's work.
December 6, 2013
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Hermione Lee's biography of the Booker Prize-winning English writer.
Hermione Lee's biography of the Booker Prize-winning English writer.
November 3, 2019
Not one page, not one character of one sentence in this book, could have served Penelope Fitzgerald better.
April 8, 2014
Penelope Fitzgerald was an author whose works I was unfamiliar with, but Hermione Lee writes an astonishing, detailed and vibrant biography introducing both the extraordinary woman and her evocative, elusive works. I have come away from the experience excited to discover Penelope Fitzgerald's lyrical and elliptical books all to myself!
I went to see Hermione Lee talk at the Oxford Literary Festival, which led me to purchase the book. She was a lively, interesting, thoughtful and thought-provoking speaker, with a fine vein of humour and literary analysis in the talk - lightly worn. The book was a pleasure to read, in a similar manner to hearing Hermione Lee speak on the subject. The book is obviously intently researched, and respectful of the subject's foibles and preferences. It is written as a mixture of biography, literary analysis and commentary on the literary scene. It is a thoroughly well-written read, immersing you in the fascinating life story of an extraordinary woman from an extraordinary family, who set the literary scene spinning in her 60s, 70s, and 80s. Absolutely fascinating, inspirational and enjoyable.
Penelope Fitzgerald had an intensely difficult time at points in her life, notably when her mother died as she went up to university, and when she, her husband and their young family were homeless and impoverished in London in the 1960s. These hardships make her late success all the more astonishing and worthy of celebration - although I doubt she herself would hold much truck with drawing attention to it. Hermione Lee casts a critical in-depth eye over the long dark period of teaching, raising her children and living on the breadline, and feels she can trace the author's development consistently from her privileged, cultured childhood through to her late-blooming literary career. She uses manuscripts, teaching notes, accounts from others, and sundry other pieces of evidence to demonstrate Penelope's engagement with literature and humanity, and her eye to detail and commitment to the recurrent themes of her books (hopeless love, good anonymous characters struggling against a cruel world (underdogs), beauty, and the conflict between reason and emotion). It is an intricately, persuasively woven narrative, and provides a rich insight into the author's work and processes. How true it is perhaps does not matter as much as it could. What matters is something more elusive - Hermione Lee seems to capture an essence of what Penelope Fitzgerald strove to be as an author - lyrical, profound, moving - looking after "the particulars" of life, and those who were trodden on by life.
Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about writing, life stories, biographical theory and Penelope Fitzgerald's work.
I went to see Hermione Lee talk at the Oxford Literary Festival, which led me to purchase the book. She was a lively, interesting, thoughtful and thought-provoking speaker, with a fine vein of humour and literary analysis in the talk - lightly worn. The book was a pleasure to read, in a similar manner to hearing Hermione Lee speak on the subject. The book is obviously intently researched, and respectful of the subject's foibles and preferences. It is written as a mixture of biography, literary analysis and commentary on the literary scene. It is a thoroughly well-written read, immersing you in the fascinating life story of an extraordinary woman from an extraordinary family, who set the literary scene spinning in her 60s, 70s, and 80s. Absolutely fascinating, inspirational and enjoyable.
Penelope Fitzgerald had an intensely difficult time at points in her life, notably when her mother died as she went up to university, and when she, her husband and their young family were homeless and impoverished in London in the 1960s. These hardships make her late success all the more astonishing and worthy of celebration - although I doubt she herself would hold much truck with drawing attention to it. Hermione Lee casts a critical in-depth eye over the long dark period of teaching, raising her children and living on the breadline, and feels she can trace the author's development consistently from her privileged, cultured childhood through to her late-blooming literary career. She uses manuscripts, teaching notes, accounts from others, and sundry other pieces of evidence to demonstrate Penelope's engagement with literature and humanity, and her eye to detail and commitment to the recurrent themes of her books (hopeless love, good anonymous characters struggling against a cruel world (underdogs), beauty, and the conflict between reason and emotion). It is an intricately, persuasively woven narrative, and provides a rich insight into the author's work and processes. How true it is perhaps does not matter as much as it could. What matters is something more elusive - Hermione Lee seems to capture an essence of what Penelope Fitzgerald strove to be as an author - lyrical, profound, moving - looking after "the particulars" of life, and those who were trodden on by life.
Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about writing, life stories, biographical theory and Penelope Fitzgerald's work.
January 6, 2015
I think I first heard of Penelope Fitzgerald when I read Richard Holmes’ admiring review of the Blue Flower in 1997, published in the NYRB. I had never heard of its subject, the German romantic writer, Novalis, but Holmes enticed me to find Fitzgerald’s book and read it. Reading the book was an experience of an opening, an assembling of observations—showing not telling; an experience that was quite magical, although also a little bewildering-- I wanted to read another Fitzgerald, and got my book group at the time to try OffShore (which won the Booker Award in 1979). I learned that this somewhat elliptical writing is characteristic for Fitzgerald: she writes and then cuts, assuming that readers don’t like too much explained to them. These are short books and every sentence counts. When I recently read Alan Hollinghurst’s review of this new biography I was eager to learn more about this elusive writer. My nephews gave it to me for Christmas (I did drop a hint after seeing it at the Tattered Cover bookstore when we were doing a little last minute shopping!) For me, the book had three parts. There was the first part about her being a “Knox.” I was fascinated to learn about this famous intellectual family: her parents were both daughters of Anglican bishops, and her father became the editor of Punch. One uncle was Ronald Knox, another Dillwin. A third, Wilfred, was ordained as an Anglican priest. Her mother, Christina, was an early graduate of Sommerset College Oxford, which Penelope also attended. Christina, a suffragette, finished college in 1906, but was not awarded her degree until 1920, when Oxford decided that women could have letters after their names. Penelope’s mother died in 1935 and in 1937 her father married Mary Shepard whose father illustrated Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh. Reading this first section was slow, and I found myself consulting the family tree at the front as well as Google to get a handle on what it was to be a “Knox.” One thing that is clear is that expectations were high! The second part is about her life as a young mother, struggling to make ends meet. She married Desmond Fitzgerald in 1942. After distinguished service in WWII, Desmond falls into alcoholism. He provides little income; Fitzgerald takes up teaching to earn money. Life is difficult. They live in precariously in a boat on the Thames, and after it sinks, eventually get into a council flat. Although she had worked for the BBC during the war, and had contact with the literary scene, writing reviews, and at one point, editing a journal with Desmond, there are a couple of decades where she is not visible. In 1975 her first book is published, a biography of Burne-Jones. It is followed by two more biographies, and a series of novels. This part of the book was the most exciting for me. Fitzgerald’s diligence and discipline are inspiring. (She credits her evangelical background for her work ethic.) Lee does a good job of explicating the scholarship behind the early books: Fitzgerald’s reading, her trips, her visits to churches to see Burne-Jones’ stained glass windows, and to museums and letter collections. There is a kind of momentum in this section depicting Fitzgerald in her fifties and sixties that is exciting and inspiring. The third part of the book is about the novels themselves, each one carefully placed in context. Lee also documents Fitzgerald’s relationships with her publishers and others in the literary world. Throughout the book one has a sense of Fitzgerald as a reader and thinker. I especially enjoyed her appreciation for Beckett, and for Gerard’s Herbal. Lee/Fitzgerald made me curious about the earlier figures whom she admired, including Charlotte Mew (the subject of one of the biographies) and Ruskin. Another side of her life—perhaps the side where she is known as Mops-- comes through in simple drawings often of children or gardens that illustrate the text. This was a thoughtful and engaging biography. It has a great index! Though not light reading, when I finished it, I wanted to read all of Fitzgerald!
January 14, 2016
I am a relatively-recent convert to Penelope Fitzgerald, but I would now list her as one of my favourite authors.
This is a fascinating biography of an enigmatic author who only achieved success in later life.
Do not expect exhaustive biographical detail. Because Fitzgerald only became a successful novelist in her 60s, there is no reliable guide to her life before then - least of all from the rather slippery and reticent subject of this biography.
But that is what makes this such a fascinating biography. Rather like Penelope Fitzgerald's novels, there is mystery and strangeness here. Her family background is eccentric and fascinating. A misstep by her husband forces the family into some difficult moments. There are many downs before she suddenly becomes a success.
And there is no doubt that her personal life - a strained marriage, struggles with money - influence her approach to writing. And as her early novels were based on her own life, there are many clues within her work.
That background does seem to have put her on the side of the underdog. She divides life into exterminators and exterminatees. Her sympathy is firmly with the latter - and her novels are peppered with characters on the fringe of society, struggling to make their way.
She retains that approach even when she moves away from the autobiographical in her later novels.
Hermione Lee delivers some brilliant analysis of what makes her writing so remarkable. I particularly enjoyed the focus on those later novels in the final chapters.
She identifies what makes Penelope Fitzgerald such a great writer, including an unusual achievement - her investment of even minor characters with a sense of a past, and a reality that few other writers achieve.
Perhaps it was her own years spent as minor character - an exterminatee - that make her determined to bring life to those on the fringe of her fiction.
It can seem sad that Fitzgerald only became an author late in life - how many more great novels might she have produced?
But this biography reveals that it was probably that journey which made her late blossoming so remarkable and secured Penelope Fitzgerald's place as one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.
This is a fascinating biography of an enigmatic author who only achieved success in later life.
Do not expect exhaustive biographical detail. Because Fitzgerald only became a successful novelist in her 60s, there is no reliable guide to her life before then - least of all from the rather slippery and reticent subject of this biography.
But that is what makes this such a fascinating biography. Rather like Penelope Fitzgerald's novels, there is mystery and strangeness here. Her family background is eccentric and fascinating. A misstep by her husband forces the family into some difficult moments. There are many downs before she suddenly becomes a success.
And there is no doubt that her personal life - a strained marriage, struggles with money - influence her approach to writing. And as her early novels were based on her own life, there are many clues within her work.
That background does seem to have put her on the side of the underdog. She divides life into exterminators and exterminatees. Her sympathy is firmly with the latter - and her novels are peppered with characters on the fringe of society, struggling to make their way.
She retains that approach even when she moves away from the autobiographical in her later novels.
Hermione Lee delivers some brilliant analysis of what makes her writing so remarkable. I particularly enjoyed the focus on those later novels in the final chapters.
She identifies what makes Penelope Fitzgerald such a great writer, including an unusual achievement - her investment of even minor characters with a sense of a past, and a reality that few other writers achieve.
Perhaps it was her own years spent as minor character - an exterminatee - that make her determined to bring life to those on the fringe of her fiction.
It can seem sad that Fitzgerald only became an author late in life - how many more great novels might she have produced?
But this biography reveals that it was probably that journey which made her late blossoming so remarkable and secured Penelope Fitzgerald's place as one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.
December 11, 2014
Wonderfully satisfying biography of an English 20th century writer with a fairly small literary output and an outsized critical reputation. I was fascinated by many aspects of her life and character: in particular, her many reversals of fortune -- and the stoical way she dealt with them -- and the relationship with her war-and-alcohol damaged husband. Also, her prodigious work ethic and enduring curiosity.
I read this quite slowly, and it gripped me in a way that biography rarely does.
I read this quite slowly, and it gripped me in a way that biography rarely does.
March 21, 2023
I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Penelope Fitzgerald before researching my most recent book, Library Lin’s Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs. A few years ago, I watched the movie, The Bookshop, and loved it. But I was unaware the film was based on a book or who had written it.
Hermione Lee has a reputation as an excellent biographer. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life is the first of her biographies I have read. If this book indicates her skill, I will go out of my way to read others.
Once you got past the lengthy section on Fitzgerald’s illustrious family, what was so compelling about the book was the sense you get of knowing the subject. Even though Lee sometimes expresses frustration with Fitzgerald’s secretiveness, she makes you feel like you know her intimately. After all, we can live with people for years and know little about what goes on in their minds.
Fitzgerald lived an unusual life, encompassing privilege, education, poverty, and hard work. Her father’s role as editor at Punch and her esteemed uncles’ involvements with Oxford and the Enigma project during World War II opened some doors for her. As did her education at Oxford. But her husband’s difficulty dealing with the aftermath as a World War II soldier led to his heavy drinking, which drove his family to near-destitution. Penelope was forced to work hard to keep the family afloat.
The family’s poverty led to unforgettable experiences, such as living in an old barge on the river Thames, which was fodder for Fitzgerald’s future novels. The barge, for example, led to her novel, Offshore. Lee did such a masterful job explaining what may have influenced Fitzgerald and the brilliance of her works (which included biographies and novels) that I am determined to read them all at some point in my life. And that is the highest compliment I can give a biographer. Lee has inspired me to read more on her subject.
Hermione Lee has a reputation as an excellent biographer. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life is the first of her biographies I have read. If this book indicates her skill, I will go out of my way to read others.
Once you got past the lengthy section on Fitzgerald’s illustrious family, what was so compelling about the book was the sense you get of knowing the subject. Even though Lee sometimes expresses frustration with Fitzgerald’s secretiveness, she makes you feel like you know her intimately. After all, we can live with people for years and know little about what goes on in their minds.
Fitzgerald lived an unusual life, encompassing privilege, education, poverty, and hard work. Her father’s role as editor at Punch and her esteemed uncles’ involvements with Oxford and the Enigma project during World War II opened some doors for her. As did her education at Oxford. But her husband’s difficulty dealing with the aftermath as a World War II soldier led to his heavy drinking, which drove his family to near-destitution. Penelope was forced to work hard to keep the family afloat.
The family’s poverty led to unforgettable experiences, such as living in an old barge on the river Thames, which was fodder for Fitzgerald’s future novels. The barge, for example, led to her novel, Offshore. Lee did such a masterful job explaining what may have influenced Fitzgerald and the brilliance of her works (which included biographies and novels) that I am determined to read them all at some point in my life. And that is the highest compliment I can give a biographer. Lee has inspired me to read more on her subject.
December 14, 2017
This volume astonished on its arrival. Buying by mail-order doesn’t prepare you for a dauntingly-thick biography. Four hundred and twenty-three octavo pages in a hard-back edition contain a thorough introduction not only to the author’s life but to her books and the “enthusiasms” which underlie so many of their pages.
Hermione Lee provides an intricate portrait of the cross-fertilisation of Fitzgerald’s life and interests, family background and academic standing, domestic context and travels.
The novelist was a member of an academic family. Her father was the editor of Punch in the years after WW1. Conversation at the dining table was not just lively but combative. It was taken for granted that this daughter would go to Oxford (where she got a First).
Penelope Fitzgerald was short of money for much of her life and she taught the daughters of prosperous Londoners until she was over seventy. Writing (whether biography or fiction) produced little income in early years. Long periods of research preceded many of her books and often demanded travel (to Russia and Germany, for example). She wrote three biographies, the subjects of those books sometimes finding their way into the pages of her fiction too.
Domestic life provided motives and material for several novels. A disappointing marriage, impoverished circumstances, always with rents to pay (and at least one hurried move) were the backdrop. Two novels were set in Suffolk, where the family had fled from Hampstead. The next home was a barge moored in Chelsea, an abode which came to a dramatic end, though fortunately with no loss of life. This experience, also, furnished a novel, “Offshore”, which won the Booker Prize. On this occasion, as on many others, the novelist was made to feel like an outsider.
Later years brought recognition from people whose opinion she valued and her work gained many readers. When she died - at the age of 83 - the young woman doctor who had to sign her death certificate exclaimed, “ Penelope Fitzgerald. I love her books”.
Hermione Lee provides an intricate portrait of the cross-fertilisation of Fitzgerald’s life and interests, family background and academic standing, domestic context and travels.
The novelist was a member of an academic family. Her father was the editor of Punch in the years after WW1. Conversation at the dining table was not just lively but combative. It was taken for granted that this daughter would go to Oxford (where she got a First).
Penelope Fitzgerald was short of money for much of her life and she taught the daughters of prosperous Londoners until she was over seventy. Writing (whether biography or fiction) produced little income in early years. Long periods of research preceded many of her books and often demanded travel (to Russia and Germany, for example). She wrote three biographies, the subjects of those books sometimes finding their way into the pages of her fiction too.
Domestic life provided motives and material for several novels. A disappointing marriage, impoverished circumstances, always with rents to pay (and at least one hurried move) were the backdrop. Two novels were set in Suffolk, where the family had fled from Hampstead. The next home was a barge moored in Chelsea, an abode which came to a dramatic end, though fortunately with no loss of life. This experience, also, furnished a novel, “Offshore”, which won the Booker Prize. On this occasion, as on many others, the novelist was made to feel like an outsider.
Later years brought recognition from people whose opinion she valued and her work gained many readers. When she died - at the age of 83 - the young woman doctor who had to sign her death certificate exclaimed, “ Penelope Fitzgerald. I love her books”.
January 10, 2014
Minus the fanboy and over-respect the biographer gives to reviews and awards (mainly the Booker Prize), Hermione Lee does quite a job putting together the terrible life and quiet works of Penelope Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is certainly not as well known as Lee's previous life-writing topics - Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton - but she can hold her own, if only in her own story.
Her life starts with a promising beginning, the daughter of a literary star, niece to geniuses in many fields from code-breaking to Christianity. She gets a first from Oxford at a time when women were only just allowed to go up there. She works for the BBC writing reviews and other tales. And yet things all fall apart with the advent of WWII and her marriage to the Irish soldier Desmond Fitzgerald, who with his alcoholism and dark presence, helps send her into a rut. Only after his death, in her late sixth decade, is she able to emerge on her own and write the novels, pithy and quiet but packed, we have today.
Lee does her absolute best here with the lowest moments of Fitzgerald's life, living on a barge, the barge sinking, her basically losing everything. The first half of this biography is worth the price of admission. The second you may just skim. You'll probably want to for lack of interest in retelling of novels and annoying reliance on award discussions.
Her life starts with a promising beginning, the daughter of a literary star, niece to geniuses in many fields from code-breaking to Christianity. She gets a first from Oxford at a time when women were only just allowed to go up there. She works for the BBC writing reviews and other tales. And yet things all fall apart with the advent of WWII and her marriage to the Irish soldier Desmond Fitzgerald, who with his alcoholism and dark presence, helps send her into a rut. Only after his death, in her late sixth decade, is she able to emerge on her own and write the novels, pithy and quiet but packed, we have today.
Lee does her absolute best here with the lowest moments of Fitzgerald's life, living on a barge, the barge sinking, her basically losing everything. The first half of this biography is worth the price of admission. The second you may just skim. You'll probably want to for lack of interest in retelling of novels and annoying reliance on award discussions.
July 19, 2015
Penelope Fitzgerald taught me briefly at Westminster Tutors for Oxbridge. Unfortunately I had glandular fever so did not have the opportunity to appreciate her spare, calm lessons as fully as I would have if I had been well. I did manage to get into Cambridge somehow in spite of it. Later, I came to read her novels. I particularly loved Offshore, her Booker prize winner, so was interested to read the biography. It is very thorough, except for large gaps where a real understanding of her relationship with her husband might be. You get more of that in Offshore, the desolate misery of when they were parted due to his drinking and general dysfunction. Another mystery is why her own family, the famous Knox brothers whom she worshipped with an uncritical adoration and wrote a book about, allowed her to fall so far that she was living in poverty in a council flat. Her father lived to a ripe old age in comfort, and I think sounds like a very selfish old thing. She was uncomplaining and forgiving, almost to excess. I enjoyed the biography a lot, particularly as it resonates with so many women's lives. No time to express their intelligence and creativity until the raising of children and the dealing with bad marriages is out of the way. Mary Wesley was the same. I find it very inspiring that they did make it in the end.
January 23, 2016
Book Of The Week Radio 4. Firstly I must say that I would not have read this had it not been picked this week as I am not a great fan of autobiographies but I have sometimes been surprised to find interest if it is someone I know very little about and with Penelope Fitzgerald this was the case.
I was quite fascinated that this author did not publish her first book until she was 60 and so it seems to be the case that she goes unknown and unread by many but then on the upside she does have her followers of people in awe of her work.
I think Lee the author did a good job in revealing what Fitzgerald was like as a person 'warts and all' and showing the complex life she led through hardship and poverty. Fitzgerald's personality really came through which can't have been easy due to how secretive she was.
But at times I felt bogged down with all the information, like I was wading through to reach the end and I'd find my mind wandering elsewhere as the narrator read the story.
I am sure a fan would have much of a different opinion though but I came away at least having learnt a lot about this Booker prize winner that I never knew before.
I was quite fascinated that this author did not publish her first book until she was 60 and so it seems to be the case that she goes unknown and unread by many but then on the upside she does have her followers of people in awe of her work.
I think Lee the author did a good job in revealing what Fitzgerald was like as a person 'warts and all' and showing the complex life she led through hardship and poverty. Fitzgerald's personality really came through which can't have been easy due to how secretive she was.
But at times I felt bogged down with all the information, like I was wading through to reach the end and I'd find my mind wandering elsewhere as the narrator read the story.
I am sure a fan would have much of a different opinion though but I came away at least having learnt a lot about this Booker prize winner that I never knew before.
August 29, 2016
A truly thoughtful and compelling biographer on the writer Penelope Fitzgerald, descendant of the famous Knox brothers (a tough act to follow.) Considered the patron saint of late starters, Fitzgerald came to fame and her stride from her '60's to her '80's even though she had been writing all of her life. Her prose is known for being concise, spiritual, historical, an eye for detail and a lot of space for the reader's own knowledge and wisdom to fill in the blanks. I can't wait to start reading her books. This was a good send off toward that goal.
June 2, 2014
A superb biography by this gifted writer about another intriguing writer. I am now prompted to read some of Penelope Fitzgerald's fiction.
May 28, 2018
As Penelope Fitzgerald wrote, "Unfortunate are the adventures which are never narrated". I'm glad her adventures were narrated in this biography.
May 13, 2020
Good biography of a superb writer. Too much literary analysis—in depth discussion of each novel and biography (which I began skipping halfway through the book)—but the biographical material is great.
March 15, 2021
Although I have never read a book by Penelope Fitzgerald, I was interested in learning about her life because she published her first book at age 60 - my current age. By reading this biography I did not learn that I am on the verge of great accomplishments but I greatly enjoyed learning about Penelope Fitzgerald’s fortitude and intelligence. With three children and an unsteady husband, she simply didn’t have the time to write books. Once her children left home and her household had a steady and reliable income she put pen to paper and never stopped writing novels, biographies and reviews until her death at age 84. I can’t wait to read one of her books.
August 15, 2015
Frankly, I had never heard of Penelope Fitzgerald before reading this biography. Since then I have read one of her novels, The Blue Flower. But mostly I went into this completely blind. But it was on the New York Times Ten Best list for 2014, I love biographies of writers, and it was written by Hermione Lee, who wrote a terrific biography of Virginia Woolf.
Perhaps the most notable thing about her is that she wrote her first book at sixty, and became famous at eighty. That's certainly encouraging to hear for us over-fifties that have yet to be published. But Lee finds that Fitzgerald came from an interesting family and led an interesting, if at times harrowing, early life.
She was the granddaughter of two bishops, and grew up in an eccentric family. She later wrote a book about her mother's brothers, which she wrote about: "She describes them in The Knox Brothers as a brilliantly clever English family distinguished by alarming honesty, caustic wit, shyness, moral rigor, willpower, oddness and powerful banked-down feelings, erupting in moments of sentiment ot in violent bursts of temper and gloom.
Her father was an editor at Punch, the legendary British humor magazine. She attended Oxford--the women's college of Somerville--and worked for the BBC. She then married a war hero, Desmond Fitzgerald, and had three children. It wasn't entirely drudgery for her, though, she and Desmond had a go at a very ambitious literary magazine, she worked at a bookstore, and then was a teacher.
Lee writes about her early life by tying them to autobiographical novels. The BBC years were turned into Human Voices, the bookstore into The Bookshop, and a time living in a barge on the Thames turned into Offshore. But she did not write a book until she penned a biography of pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones. Her first novel was a light thriller, The Golden Child, after which she was encouraged to write mysteries.
But she became a different kind of writer, a literary novelist who achieved some fame in the U.K. Her novel Offshore was a surprise winner of the Booker Prize, and she became a member of the literary set, judging competitions, writing reviews, and turning out short but well-crafted novels.
One of the problems of reading a biography of a writer you haven't read is you have to only believe the biographer's belief in her talent. Lee summarizes the novels, which can be difficult sledding. But, as a writer myself, supposedly, I was intrigued by the descriptions of her style and creative process. Fitzgerald wrote, "I am drawn...to people who seem to have born defeated or, even, profoundly lost."
Her later books were not autobiographical. She wrote about a secretive college in The Gates of Angels, Russia in The Beginning of Spring, and her last novel, The Blue Flower, was about the German romantic poet Novalis. That book, released when she was 80, made her a star of sorts.
Lee's book is certainly not a hagiography. She writes about the difficulties of the Fitzgerald marriage: "She knew...that Desmond was a failure. He was kind and devoted to her and the children. But he was not earning enough for the housekeeping; his professional life was going nowhere; he was spending money on drink."
Fitzgerald was devoted to her children and grandchildren, but never seemed to approve of her son's choice of wife. She also seemed to be something of a downer in her philosophy about life: "'Really the book is about what a great mistake it is to try and make other people happy.' The blurb notes: 'Trying to make other people happy is not only difficult but ruinous.'"
I would disagree with that, but I'm intrigued enough that I will try another of her books. I wasn't crazy about The Blue Flower; perhaps one of her earlier books will charm me. It's a great biography, though.
May 6, 2019
Hermione Lee’s biography of Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life is most definitely an academic read. This comprehensive and well-documented biography details the interesting life of Fitzgerald, both personal and literary. The author Hermione Lee offers the inspiration behind Fitzgerald’s many writings as well as a summary of each story and biography Fitzgerald wrote.
Fitzgerald’s novels seem to draw closely on her personal experiences. However, she did do copious research for all her writings. Fitzgerald traveled extensively, even to Tasmania, and Lee’s biography is full of specific detail of both those destinations and Fitzgerald’s home life. We learn of Fitzgerald’s educational journey. She was an academic and taught in different schools to support her family. I’d say she believed in the importance of family and of keeping the family together even when times were tough.
Fitzgerald believed in the importance of the arts, especially what she called the “useful arts, artwork drawn from nature, made for everyday use to improve the lives of ordinary people.” [p-214 paperback] Fitzgerald achieved literary acclaim later in life. The purpose of Lee’s biography is for the reader to understand Fitzgerald’s writings and beliefs better. I’d say Lee accomplished her goal.
Fitzgerald’s novels seem to draw closely on her personal experiences. However, she did do copious research for all her writings. Fitzgerald traveled extensively, even to Tasmania, and Lee’s biography is full of specific detail of both those destinations and Fitzgerald’s home life. We learn of Fitzgerald’s educational journey. She was an academic and taught in different schools to support her family. I’d say she believed in the importance of family and of keeping the family together even when times were tough.
Fitzgerald believed in the importance of the arts, especially what she called the “useful arts, artwork drawn from nature, made for everyday use to improve the lives of ordinary people.” [p-214 paperback] Fitzgerald achieved literary acclaim later in life. The purpose of Lee’s biography is for the reader to understand Fitzgerald’s writings and beliefs better. I’d say Lee accomplished her goal.
March 5, 2015
This review just appeared in CHOICE: Prize-winning author of Edith Wharton (CH, Nov'97, 35-1380), Willa Cather (1990), and Virginia Woolf (CH, Jan'08, 45-2476), Lee (Univ. of Oxford, UK) here gives British writer Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) the royal treatment in a work that is as much social history as it is biography. To understand Fitzgerald, Lee suggests, her family's background in Edwardian England has to be thoroughly investigated, for there among churchmen and women's rights advocates, writers and educators, she learned the virtues of understatement that formed the background of her novels and biographies. Fitzgerald is not an easy person to know even when she writes about her family, but Lee does well interpreting the nuances of her subject's narratives. The result is a deeply grounded but sometimes ponderous biography. Fitzgerald, who was highly valued for her brief novels, might have been dismayed at the lengths to which her biographer goes. Still, this magisterial work brings Fitzgerald's world alive and illuminates the sources of her novels, which gradually moved farther afield to encompass Russia before the revolution and the life of the Romantic writer Novalis—a significant accomplishment for a writer who published her first book when she was approaching the age of 60.
April 6, 2019
Anyone, like myself, who has enjoyed the novels of Penelope Fitzgerald for over forty years, this biography, by Hermione Lee will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf.Penelope Fitzgerald had, by any yardstick, a life that was varied, difficult, and at times tragic.Despite her seeming advantages of a high profile intellectual family,with a degree from Oxford, a zest for life and opportunity, in later years she ends up, with her family on a sinking Thames barge !!
After many years of teaching, and reaching the age of sixty, the writer of extraordinary novels began to appear, with widespread recognition at eighty years of age.
Hermione Lee, with great care and attention, provides the reader with, not only a fascinating biography of Penelope Fitzgerald's life, her family background and expectations, but also overviews of her written work, especially the novels that most people would know her by.There are many essential comments and explanations, by Fitzgerald on, not only what she wrote, but why she wrote in her particular style, how she quite often found those ' who fail in life ' worthy of having such failure recognized and recorded, presented with their own values of life and living.
After many years of teaching, and reaching the age of sixty, the writer of extraordinary novels began to appear, with widespread recognition at eighty years of age.
Hermione Lee, with great care and attention, provides the reader with, not only a fascinating biography of Penelope Fitzgerald's life, her family background and expectations, but also overviews of her written work, especially the novels that most people would know her by.There are many essential comments and explanations, by Fitzgerald on, not only what she wrote, but why she wrote in her particular style, how she quite often found those ' who fail in life ' worthy of having such failure recognized and recorded, presented with their own values of life and living.
July 13, 2015
Superb biogtraphy of this woman who in most ways was a late starter, but who had, unbnownst to me, a great success in the magazine world as a young woman, editing a highbrow-ish title for the publishers of the great British picture magazine Lilliput. When that fell apart, so did her life, starting with that of her husband, injured mentally by WWII. (Odd how many great or prominemnt English writers of the mid-20th century had "failed" or unhappy marriages - Penelope, All of the Inklings, Nancy Mitford, down to JK Rowling.) For me, Fitzgerald's novels and her joint biography of her father and unles are some of the great books of the 20th century - and I finish this biography as puzzled by her ability to create them and by the sources their power as I was before I began it - which has nothing to do with what Hermione Lee has suceeded in doing or failed to do, but with Fitzgerald's mystery. As for the biography, it is strong and humane and understanding equally about the life and the works, which is very rare.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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