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Penelope Fitzgerald


UK flag (1916 - 2000)

Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She was the author of nine novels, three of which - 'The Bookshop', 'The Beginning of Spring' and 'The Gate of Angels' - were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And she won the prize in 1979 for 'Offshore'. Her most recent novel, 'The Blue Flower', was the most admired novel of 1995, chosen no fewer than nineteen times in the press as the 'Book of the Year'. It won America's National Book Critics' Circle Award, and this helped introduce her to a wider international readership.

A superb biographer and critic, Penelope Fitzgerald was also the author of lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (her first book), the poet Charlotte Mew and The Knox Brothers - a study of her remarkable father Edmund Knox, editor of Punch, and his equally remarkable brothers.

Penelope Fitzgerald did not embark on her literary career until the age of sixty. After graduating from Somerville College, Oxford, she worked at the BBC during the war, edited a literary journal, ran a bookshop and taught at various schools, including a theatrical school; her early novels drew upon many of these experiences.
 

Genres: Literary Fiction
 
Novels
   The Golden Child (1977)
   The Bookshop (1978)
   Offshore (1979)
   Human Voices (1980)
   At Freddie's (1982)
   Innocence (1986)
   The Beginning of Spring (1988)
   The Gate of Angels (1990)
   The Blue Flower (1995)
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Collections
   Fanfare (1999) (with others)
   The Means of Escape (2000)
   Selected Prose (2002)
   The Afterlife (2003)
   A House of Air (2003)
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Non fiction show
 
Omnibus editions show
 
Penelope Fitzgerald recommends
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Love for the Lost (2000)
Catherine Fox
"Catherine Fox is brilliantly skilful as a novelist."
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Equal Love (2000)
Peter Ho Davies
"I read Equal Love with great admiration. Davies's variations on a theme are brilliant."

Anthologies containing stories by Penelope Fitzgerald
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Life (2013)
Great Short Stories for Women by Women
edited by
Victoria Hislop

More anthologies 


Awards
Booker Prize Best Novel nominee (1978) : The Bookshop
Booker Prize Best Novel winner (1979) : Offshore
Booker Prize Best Novel nominee (1988) : The Beginning of Spring
Booker Prize Best Novel nominee (1990) : The Gate of Angels


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