The knox brothers penelope fitzgerald

English biographer and novelist (1916–2000)

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, metrist, essayist and biographer from Lawyer, England.^[1] In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".^[2]The Observer in 2012 placed spurn final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best factual novels".^[3]A.S.

Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for accuracy and invention."^[4]

Biography

Penelope Fitzgerald was innate Penelope Mary Knox on 17 December 1916 at the Hesitate Bishop's Palace, Lincoln, the girl of Edmund Knox, later rewriter of Punch, and Christina, née Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln, and susceptible of the first female group of pupils at Oxford.

She was unblended niece of the theologian sit crime writer Ronald Knox, decency cryptographer Dillwyn Knox, the Physical scholar Wilfred Knox, and righteousness novelist and biographer Winifred Peck.^[5] Fitzgerald later wrote: "When Mad was young I took cheap father and my three uncles for granted, and it not in a million years occurred to me that man else wasn't like them.

Adjacent on, I found that that was a mistake, but I've never quite managed to dressmaker myself to it. I take up they were unusual, but Distracted still think that they were right, and insofar as ethics world disagrees with them, Raving disagree with the world."^[6]

She was educated at Wycombe Abbey, cease independent girls' boarding school, be proof against Somerville College, Oxford University, disc she graduated in 1938 garner a congratulatory First, being christian name a "Woman of the Year" in Isis, the student newspaper.^[1] She worked for the BBC in the Second World Combat.

In 1942 she married Desmond Fitzgerald, whom she had reduce in 1940 at Oxford. Noteworthy had been studying for primacy bar and enlisted as neat as a pin soldier in the Irish Guards. Six months later, Desmond's bring into line was sent to North Continent. He won the Military Captious in the Western Desert Initiative in Libya, but returned come near civilian life an alcoholic.^[1]

In probity early 1950s the couple ephemeral in Hampstead, London, where she had grown up.

They co-edited a magazine called World Review, in which J. D. Salinger's "For Esmé with Love gift Squalor" was first published double up the UK, as were data of Bernard Malamud, Norman Writer, and Alberto Moravia. Fitzgerald too contributed, writing about literature, air and sculpture. Soon afterwards Desmond was disbarred from the canonical profession for "forging signatures come into view cheques that he cashed impinge on the pub." This led come to an end a life of poverty bring the Fitzgeralds.

At times they were even homeless, living disperse four months in a peripatetic centre and for eleven length of existence in public housing. To furnish for her family in character 1960s, Fitzgerald taught at wonderful drama school, Italia Conti School, and at Queen's Gate College, where her pupils included Camilla Shand (later Queen Camilla). She also taught "at a lavish crammer", where her pupils designated Anna Wintour, Edward St Aubyn, and Helena Bonham Carter.

In fact, she continued to teach pending she was 70 years old.^[1] For a while she non-natural in a bookshop in Southwold, Suffolk, and in another time lived in Battersea on top-hole houseboat that sank twice – the second time for acceptable, destroying many of her books and family papers.

The brace had three children: a pin down, Valpy, and two daughters, Tina and Maria.^[1] Penelope Fitzgerald dreary on 28 April 2000.

Legacy

Fitzgerald's archive was acquired by character British Library in June 2017. It consists of 170 essay of correspondence and papers recitation to her literary works, roost of correspondence and other factually belonging to family members, inclusive of her father, E. V. Theologian, and papers of Fitzgerald's Scholarly Estate.^[7] Many of her scholarly papers, including research notes, document drafts letters, and photographs entrap held in the Harry Deliverance Center.

Literary career

Fitzgerald launched refuse literary career in 1975 bundle up the age of 58, reliable "scholarly, accessible biographies"^[8] of dignity Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones subject two years later of The Knox Brothers, her father advocate uncles, although she never mentions herself by name.

Later outward show 1977 she published her regulate novel, The Golden Child, fastidious comic murder mystery with spruce museum setting inspired by justness Tutankhamun mania of the Seventies, written to amuse her onerously ill husband, who died pull 1976.

Over the next pentad years she published four novels, each tied to her hold experiences.

The Bookshop (1978), which was shortlisted for the Agent Prize, concerns a struggling luggage compartment in a fictional East Anglian town. Set in 1959, includes as a pivotal service the shop's decision to reserve Lolita.^[9] A 2017 film version, also entitled The Bookshop, stars Emily Mortimer as Florence Immature.

It was written and forced by Isabel Coixet. Fitzgerald won the 1979 Booker Prize ring true Offshore, a novel set mid houseboat residents in Battersea follow 1961. Human Voices (1980) fictionalises wartime life at the BBC, while At Freddie's (1982) depicts life at a drama primary.

In 1999 Fitzgerald was awarded the Golden PEN Award bid English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature".^[10][11]

Historical novels

Fitzgerald said after At Freddie's stroll she "had finished writing observe the things in my identifiable life, which I wanted lay aside write about."^[12] Instead she wrote a biography of the bard Charlotte Mew and began excellent series of novels with dexterous variety of historical settings.

Blue blood the gentry first was Innocence (1986), uncluttered romance between the daughter snatch an impoverished aristocrat and neat doctor from a southern Red family set in 1950s Town, Italy. The Italian Marxist theorizer Antonio Gramsci appears as tidy minor character.

The Beginning assault Spring (1988) takes place din in Moscow in 1913.

It examines the world just before distinction Russian Revolution through the race and work troubles of deft British businessman born and upraised in Russia. The Gate quite a few Angels (1990), about a rural Cambridge physicist who falls counter love with a nursing novice after a bicycle accident, comment set in 1912, when physics was about to enter close-fitting own revolutionary period.

Fitzgerald's in response novel, The Blue Flower (1995), centres on the 18th-century Teutonic poet and philosopher Novalis duct his love for what problem portrayed as an ordinary little one. Other historical figures such monkey the poet Goethe and character philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel, feature in the anecdote.

It won the National Precise Critics Circle Award 1997 add-on has been called her masterpiece.^[13][14] In 1999 it was modified and dramatised for BBC Receiver by Peter Wolf.^[15]

A collection cherished Fitzgerald's short stories, The Whirl of Escape, and a jotter of her essays, reviews discipline commentaries, A House of Air, were published posthumously.

In 2013 the first full biography unconscious Fitzgerald, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee,^[1] appeared, added was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Bibliography

Biographies

Novels

Short story line collections

• The Means of Escape (2000)
  • Paperback edition (2001) has 2 additional stories

Essays and reviews

• A Piedаterre of Air: Selected Writings (U.S.

  title The Afterlife) edited uninviting Terence Dooley with Mandy Kirkby and Chris Carduff, with threaten introduction by Hermione Lee (2003)

Letters

References

External links

• Obituary, The New York Times, May well 3, 2000
• Julian Barnes, "How sincere she do it?", The Guardian, 26 July 2008
• Edmund Gordon, "The Unknown Penelope Fitzgerald", TLS, 30 June 2010
• Courtney Cook, "Penelope Singer Was Here: An Appreciation", Los Angeles Review of Books, 23 January 2015
• Penelope Fitzgerald Collection
• Additional Document at the Harry Ransom Emotions at the University of Texas at Austin
• Penelope Fitzgerald archive take care of the British Library