Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.37 (887 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0385352344 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 512 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-01-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
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. 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. ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARA Best Book of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle TimesWinner of the Plutarch Award for Best BiographyThe 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. 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. She would go on to win some of the most coveted awards in literature—the
"Amazing biographer ventures into more challenging territory" according to S. McGee. When Penelope Fitzgerald stepped up to collect the Booker Prize (as it then was) for her 1979 novel, Offshore: A Novel, the literary world was taken aback. Not just that crowd favorite (heavily tipped to win by the bookmakers) V.S. Naipaul hadn't claimed one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes, but instead had been pipped at the post by an elderly woman who hadn't begun writing novels until her 60s, but by her appearance -- that of an elderly and perhaps slightly dotty aunt. How could one reconcile that with the work itself, a crisp, elegant and almost-novel. "Extremely well researched and complex biography of an enigmatic writer" according to Kcorn. I was drawn to this biography because I am a fan of Penelope Fitzgerald, an author who found acclaim only late in her life. It is a stellar work but I strongly recommend reading some of Fitzgerald's novels before tackling this biography. Not only is it far from light reading, it might be inaccessible to those who aren't fans of the author - or at the very least familiar with some of her books. Author Hermione Lee doesn't just cover the highlights of Fitzgerald's life. Instead, she includes some of the tiniest scraps of information, fascinating for me but perhaps less in. R PRIUS said Penelope Fitzgerald: A Vague Life. I wasn't really all that familiar with the works of Penelope Fitzgerald. This was actually not as much of a disadvantage as one might think because this is an interesting book about a woman who was forced to deal with what seemed like a life full of challenges and rejections and not only managed to not only survive but also to prevail and rise above it all. Fitzgerald, born Penelope Knox, descended from a long line of people who were seemingly reticent and closed mouthed and rarely revealed much about themselves. What the author had on Fitzgerald came more from others w
She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her many works are literary biographies of Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald, which won the James Tait Black Prize and the Plutarch Award for Best Biography. hermionelee . She lives in Oxford and Yorkshire. Hermione Lee is a biographer, critic, teacher of literature, and presiden
“Excellent. Like its subject’s own late flowering, it is a triumph.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “An extraordinarily fine portrayal of the relationship between this author’s life and her attraction to her chosen subject, in Lee’s words: ‘characters at odds with their world: the depressives, the shy, the unworldly, the emotionally inarticulate’. Pithy. The expectation for a literary biography is that the secrets come out. Riveting. Any admirer of Penelope Fitzgerald’s work—or, for that matter, any passionate reader—will enjoy this capacious, masterly biography. Pleasingly impressionistic. Fitzgerald was born into a remarkably accomplished and well-connected family of clerics and writers: h