Reviews

• It was not until the renowned author Penelope Fitzgerald was sixty years old that she became a published novelist - but why did it take so long for this marvellous writer to attain her goal? Hermione Lee's excellent biography, along with many other interesting details, reveals the answer to this question. Penelope Fitzgerald was born Penelope Knox in 1916, into an intellectual family of high achievers: both grandfathers were bishops, her uncle Dillwyn, was a brilliant classicist and cryptographer, who worked on the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park, and her father, Evoe Knox, was the editor of 'Punch'. Penelope grew up in Hampstead ("Hampstead was literary, poetic, artistic, rural, part-bohemian, part-genteel") and, after doing well at school, she went up to Somerville College, Oxford, shortly after the very sad death of her mother. As was expected, Penelope obtained a first class degree and left Somerville with the intentions to start her writing career. She did write some pieces for 'Punch' and she also wrote scripts for the BBC, where she worked during the war (and where she got the inspiration for her later novel Human Voices ) but her writing career did not then take off. In 1942, Penelope married Desmond Fitzgerald, an officer in the Irish Guards, who was sent to North Africa shortly after the marriage. Desmond returned home with a Military Cross, but he came back as a changed man, complete with nervous problems and a strong compulsion for alcohol. In 1950, Penelope and Desmond took over as joint editors of the 'World Review', a literary and cultural magazine, but with three children and a rambling house in Hampstead, the Fitzgeralds were living beyond their means and Desmond's drinking was becoming even more of a problem. By the late fifties, the Fitzgeralds were practically penniless and it was necessary to leave Hampstead and move to Southwold, where Penelope got a job working in a bookshop. By 1960, money was so tight that they rented an old Thames barge, named Grace, at Chelsea Reach (where her novel Offshore the 1979 Booker Prize Winner was later set), which was moored opposite a row of old tenement buildings. Life was now becoming even more difficult for the Fitzgeralds - Desmond, who had been working in the legal profession, had been disbarred after being arrested for fraud and was drinking very heavily, and Penelope, exhausted and under great stress, spent her nights sleeping alone in the living area of the barge on a single-day bed. She spent her days working as a teacher, first at the Italia Conti Stage School (where she collected material for her novel At Freddie's ) and then at Queen's Gate, a private girls' school in Kensington, writing whenever she could in her free periods in the staffroom. One night the decrepit, leaking barge sank, taking all of the Fitzgeralds' belongings with it - another huge setback for Penelope and her family. Penelope however, went into school the next day, slightly more disheveled than usual and said: "I'm sorry I'm late, but my house sank." There is, of course, a lot more in this well-researched, interesting and, at times, very sad biography, but I shall leave that for prospective readers to discover. Hermione Lee, biographer of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather has, with careful and meticulous research, done an excellent job in revealing details of the writing life and personal life of this intriguing, complex, elusive and extremely private writer, whose career only really took off once her husband had died. By the time of her death in 2000, at the age of 83, Penelope Fitzgerald had written three biographies and nine brief, but beautifully composed novels, four of them closely based on her own life; reading this absorbing and poignant biography, with its lovely selection of photographs, has made me keen to go through my bookcases and read all nine of those novels again, with an enlightened knowledge of how some of those stories came about. And that is just what a good biography should do. 5 Stars. Please note: There is a very interesting review with Hermione Lee in: Paris Review Issue 205 (Summer 2013) where she talks about the art of biography. Also highly recommended by Hermione Lee: Virginia Woolf .

• I found this book hard to get into,possibly the style of writing put me off. Some people may well enjoy it, but too heavy for me

• Penelope Fitzgerald was a superb writer of fiction,and I already knew something of her life.this biography was extensively researched and well written in a clear and sensitive manner.I can heartily recommend it to her admirers.

• Das Buch klebte an der Kartonverpackung, die Klebstoffreste lassen sich nicht entfernen.

• I'm often disappointed by biographies because they fail to convey key characteristics of the subject. They say how intelligent or charismatic or funny (etc.) the subject was, but one doesn't get the real SENSE of it. This is not the case in Hermione Lee's very intelligent, somewhat understated (no arm chair psychology here!), gently humorous, deeply thoughtful, and respectful biography of Penelope Fitzgerald. As with PF's fiction, it is the ellipses that allowed the reader to fill in aspects (pretty big aspects) of her life and character. First among these is her quite distant relationship with her son, Valpy, after he made a marriage she didn't approve of to a Spanish woman (who is more opposite than a stiff-upper-lip Brit than a southern Mediterranean wife, at least in the mother's mind?), as well as her profound silence about her husband with whom she stayed until his death, but refused to speak about ever again. The 5 stars do not indicate that I read every word...other reviewers have noted the ponderous genealogy at the beginning and others a great deal about German philosophy in the discussion of the Blue Flower, etc. But for me, I found this a very satisfactory biography of a very formidable intellect and a woman who was a survivor faced with daunting circumstances. The bookt also sent me to novels of PF I hadn't read, which I then read with a much deeper appreciation.

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