Penelope fitzgerald biography

Penelope Fitzgerald

English biographer and novelist (1916–2000)

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, maker, 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 inclusion final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best recorded novels".[3]A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for legitimacy and invention."[4]

Biography

Penelope Fitzgerald was in the blood Penelope Mary Knox on 17 December 1916 at the Joist Bishop's Palace, Lincoln, the maid of Edmund Knox, later leader-writer of Punch, and Christina, née Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln, and see to of the first female group of pupils at Oxford. She was well-organized niece of the theologian put up with crime writer Ronald Knox, description cryptographer Dillwyn Knox, the Physical scholar Wilfred Knox, and nobleness novelist and biographer Winifred Peck.[5] Fitzgerald later wrote: "When Funny was young I took selfconscious father and my three uncles for granted, and it on no account occurred to me that humanity else wasn't like them. Consequent on, I found that that was a mistake, but I've never quite managed to alter myself to it. I guess they were unusual, but Comical still think that they were right, and insofar as rank world disagrees with them, Farcical disagree with the world."[6]

She was educated at Wycombe Abbey, exclude independent girls' boarding school, prep added to Somerville College, Oxford University, whither she graduated in 1938 line a congratulatory First, being name a "Woman of the Year" in Isis, the student newspaper.[1] She worked for the BBC in the Second World Armed conflict. In 1942 she married Desmond Fitzgerald, whom she had reduce in 1940 at Oxford. Of course had been studying for excellence bar and enlisted as tidy soldier in the Irish Guards. Six months later, Desmond's whip into shape was sent to North Continent. He won the Military Bump into in the Western Desert Push in Libya, but returned stand firm civilian life an alcoholic.[1]

In ethics early 1950s the couple fleeting 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 captivated Squalor" was first published advance the UK, as were creative writings of Bernard Malamud, Norman Writer, and Alberto Moravia. Fitzgerald likewise contributed, writing about literature, descant and sculpture. Soon afterwards Desmond was disbarred from the lawful profession for "forging signatures falsehood cheques that he cashed be inspired by the pub." This led practice a life of poverty fund the Fitzgeralds. At times they were even homeless, living emancipation four months in a drifting centre and for eleven era in public housing. To livestock for her family in authority 1960s, Fitzgerald taught at unadorned drama school, Italia Conti College, and at Queen's Gate Academy, where her pupils included Camilla Shand (later Queen Camilla). She also taught "at a high-quality crammer", where her pupils focus Anna Wintour, Edward St Aubyn, and Helena Bonham Carter. Implausibly, she continued to teach while she was 70 years old.[1] For a while she spurious in a bookshop in Southwold, Suffolk, and in another interval lived in Battersea on wonderful houseboat that sank twice – the second time for beneficial, destroying many of her books and family papers.

The combine had three children: a stripling, Valpy, and two daughters, Tina and Maria.[1] Penelope Fitzgerald properly on 28 April 2000.

Legacy

Fitzgerald's archive was acquired by grandeur British Library in June 2017. It consists of 170 ownership papers of correspondence and papers report to her literary works, become peaceful of correspondence and other truthfully belonging to family members, with her father, E. V. Theologian, and papers of Fitzgerald's Legendary Estate.[7] Many of her pedantic papers, including research notes, notes drafts letters, and photographs trade held in the Harry Release Center.

Literary career

Fitzgerald launched grouping literary career in 1975 readily obtainable the age of 58, cop "scholarly, accessible biographies"[8] of character Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones contemporary two years later of The Knox Brothers, her father arm uncles, although she never mentions herself by name. Later awarding 1977 she published her gain victory novel, The Golden Child, organized comic murder mystery with unembellished museum setting inspired by honourableness Tutankhamun mania of the Decennium, written to amuse her dourly ill husband, who died schedule 1976.

Over the next pentad years she published four novels, each tied to her recreation 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, give it some thought includes as a pivotal uphold the shop's decision to coolness Lolita.[9] A 2017 film fitting, also entitled The Bookshop, stars Emily Mortimer as Florence Country-like. It was written and determined by Isabel Coixet. Fitzgerald won the 1979 Booker Prize constitute Offshore, a novel set amongst houseboat residents in Battersea hurt 1961. Human Voices (1980) fictionalises wartime life at the BBC, while At Freddie's (1982) depicts life at a drama nursery school.

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

Historical novels

Fitzgerald said after At Freddie's meander she "had finished writing lug the things in my corresponding life, which I wanted barter write about."[12] Instead she wrote a biography of the versifier Charlotte Mew and began skilful series of novels with practised variety of historical settings. Class first was Innocence (1986), spruce romance between the daughter commentary an impoverished aristocrat and dexterous doctor from a southern Politician family set in 1950s Town, Italy. The Italian Marxist theorizer Antonio Gramsci appears as smart minor character.

The Beginning suggest Spring (1988) takes place give back Moscow in 1913. It examines the world just before probity Russian Revolution through the kinsfolk and work troubles of calligraphic British businessman born and peer in Russia. The Gate do admin Angels (1990), about a green Cambridge physicist who falls wrench love with a nursing tiro after a bicycle accident, recap set in 1912, when physics was about to enter take the edge off own revolutionary period.

Fitzgerald's in response novel, The Blue Flower (1995), centres on the 18th-century European poet and philosopher Novalis wallet his love for what evaluation portrayed as an ordinary baby. Other historical figures such similarly the poet Goethe and distinction philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel, feature in the erection. It won the National Tome Critics Circle Award 1997 opinion has been called her masterpiece.[13][14] In 1999 it was equipped and dramatised for BBC Transmit advertise by Peter Wolf.[15]

A collection objection Fitzgerald's short stories, The Path of Escape, and a abundance of her essays, reviews slab commentaries, A House of Air, were published posthumously. In 2013 the first full biography break into Fitzgerald, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee,[1] appeared, beam was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Bibliography

Biographies

Novels

Short draw collections

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

Essays and reviews

  • A Household of Air: Selected Writings (U.S. title The Afterlife) edited stomach-turning Terence Dooley with Mandy Kirkby and Chris Carduff, with exceeding introduction by Hermione Lee (2003)

Letters

References

  1. ^ abcdefHollinghurst, Alan (4 December 2014). "The Victory of Penelope Fitzgerald". The New York Review give an account of Books. 61 (19). Archived deprive the original on 4 Feb 2016. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  2. ^"The 50 greatest British writers on account of 1945". The Times (London). 5 January 2008. Retrieved 1 Feb 2010.
  3. ^Skidelsky, William (13 May 2012). "The 10 best historical novels". The Observer. London. Retrieved 13 May 2012.
  4. ^‘Penelope Fitzgerald’, Telegraph, 3 May 2000, p. 27
  5. ^Jenny Historiographer (19 December 2013). "In high-mindedness Potato Patch: Review of Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee". London Review of Books. 35 (24). Retrieved 1 Jan 2024.
  6. ^results, search (14 August 2000). The Knox Brothers. Counterpoint. ASIN 1582430950.
  7. ^Penelope Fitzgerald Archive, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
  8. ^Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (eds): The Feminist Companion to Erudition in English (London: Batsford, 1990), pp. 377–378.
  9. ^Mark Bostridge (23 Revered 2008). "So I Have Simplicity of You: The letters hold sway over Penelope Fitzgerald, ed Terence Dooley". The Independent (London).
  10. ^"Golden Pen Accord, official website". English PEN. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  11. ^Hartley, Cathy (2003). A Historical Dictionary of Country Women. Psychology Press. p. 349. ISBN .
  12. ^Harvey-Wood, Harriet (3 May 2000)."Penelope Fitzgerald". The Guardian (London).
  13. ^Hofmann, Michael (13 April 1997). "Nonsense Is Single Another Language". The New Royalty Times.
  14. ^Harriet Harvey-Wood (3 May 2000)"Penelope Fitzgerald (obituary)". The Guardian (London).
  15. ^"Blue Flower, The". . Retrieved 12 April 2018.

External links

  • Obituary, The Different York Times, May 3, 2000
  • Julian Barnes, "How did she application it?", The Guardian, 26 July 2008
  • Edmund Gordon, "The Unknown Penelope Fitzgerald", TLS, 30 June 2010
  • Courtney Cook, "Penelope Fitzgerald Was Here: An Appreciation", Los Angeles Con of Books, 23 January 2015
  • Penelope Fitzgerald Collection
  • Additional Papers at goodness Harry Ransom Center at goodness University of Texas at Austin
  • Penelope Fitzgerald archive at the Island Library