Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald, the Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Offshore’ and ‘The Blue Flower’, turns her attention to the remarkable life of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. ‘I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be, in a light better than any light that ever shone – in a land no one can define or remember, only desire’ Edward Burne-Jones Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was the prototypical pre-Raphaelite but with a truly individual sensibility. Penelope Fitzgerald’s delightful biography charts his life from humble beginnings in Birmingham as the son of an unsuccessful framer, through a transformative period at Oxford, where he met his close friend and collaborator William Morris, and on to the apprenticeship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti that would shape his artistic vision. His work harks back to an Arthurian England – an Arcadia that offered solace against the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and on a deeply personal level provided respite from his ever-present melancholia. This is an illuminating portrait of a fascinating figure – artistic genius, doting father, troubled husband – written with all Penelope Fitzgerald’s characteristic sympathy and insight.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of â??Offshoreâ?? comes this unusual romance between the poet Novalis and his fiancée Sophie, newly introduced by Candia McWilliam.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s final masterpiece. One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. The year is 1794 and Fritz, passionate, idealistic and brilliant, is seeking his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’: twelve-year-old Sophie. His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal. What can he be thinking? Tracing the dramatic early years of the young German who was to become the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis, The Blue Flower is a masterpiece of invention, evoking the past with a reality that we can almost feel. Her final book, it confirmed Fitzgerald’s reputation as one of the finest novelists of the 20th century.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

Short-listed for the Booker Prize. "A singular accomplishment." -- Boston Globe "Powerfully bewitching." -- Los Angeles Times In 1912, rational Fred Fairly, one of Cambridge's best and brightest, crashes his bike and wakes up in bed with a stranger -- fellow casualty Daisy Saunders, a charming, pretty, generous working-class nurse. So begins a series of complications -- not only of the heart but also of the head -- as Fred and Daisy take up each other's education and turn each other's philosophies upside down. This new edition features an introduction by Philip Hensher, author of Scenes from Early Life, along with new cover art.

"A wonderful combination of deadpan English comedy and surreal farce." -- A. S. Byatt "A tribute to the unsung and quintessentially English heroism of imperfect people." -- New Criterion When British listeners tuned in to the BBC's Nine O'Clock News in the middle of 1940, they had no idea what human dramas--and follies--were unfolding behind the scenes. Targeted by enemy bombers, the BBC had turned its concert hall into a dormitory for both sexes, and personal chaos rivaled the political. Amidst the bombs and broadcasts two program directors fight for power while their younger female assistants fall prey to affairs, abandonment, and unrequited love. Reading this intimate glimpse behind the scenes of the BBC in its heyday, "one is left with the sensation," William Boyd wrote in London Magazine, "that this is what it was really like." This new edition features an introduction by Mark Damazer, along with new cover art.

National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop is "a marvelously piercing fiction" (Times Literary Supplement), short-listed for the Booker Prize.With an Introduction by David Nicholls, international best-selling author of One Day. In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop--the only bookshop--in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.Basis for the major motion picture starring Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, and Patricia Clarkson.

Fitzgerald's novel of pre-revolutionary Moscow, shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Featuring an introduction by Andrew Miller."Fitzgerald was the author of several slim, perfect novels. The Blue Flower and The Beginning of Spring both had me abuzz for days the first time I read them. She was curiously perfect."-- Teju Cole, author of Open City "Writing so precise and lilting it can make you shiver." -- Los Angeles Times March 1913. Moscow is stirring herself to meet the beginning of spring. English painter Frank Reid returns from work one night to find that his wife has gone away; no one knows where or why, or whether she'll ever come back. All Frank knows for sure is that he is now alone and must find someone to care for his three young children. Into Frank's life comes Lisa Ivanovna, a quiet, calming beauty from the country, untroubled to the point of seeming simple. But is she? And why has Frank's bookkeeper, Selwyn Crane, gone to such lengths to bring these two together?

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER in Fiction. Booker Prize-winning novelist Fitzgerald's crowning literary work centers on the 18th-century German poet and philosopher Novalis and his love for the simple Sophie.The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe among the small towns and great universities of 18th-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide"--a plain, simple child named Sophievon K hn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends. Their brilliant young Fritz, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard? How can this be?Their rationality of love, the transfiguration of the commonplace, the clarity of purpose that comes with knowing one's own fate-- these are the themes of this beguiling novel, themes treated with a mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor."An extraordinary imagining . . . an original masterpiece."--Financial Times"An astonishing book...Fitzgerald's greatest triumph."--New York Times Book Review

"A jewel of a book." --Daily Mail It is the 1960s, in London's West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School, which supplies child actors for everything from Shakespeare to musicals to the Christmas pantomime. Of unknown age and provenance, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma--a woman who by sheer force of character and single-minded thrust has turned herself and her school into a national institution. Anyone who is anyone must know Freddie. Filled with unique and hilarious insights into the theatrical world, At Freddie's is a beguiling story for those of us who sometimes pretend to be something we are not. "Love, fear, class, ambition, even death--it's all in here, but so elegantly presented that you've finished your plate before you even think to ask about the ingredients." --National Public Radio

"Dazzling. The novelistic equivalent of a Turner watercolor." --Washington PostPenelope Fitzgerald's Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames. This edition includes a new introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.On the Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the slightly disreputable, the temporarily lost, and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tides of the Thames. There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna, an abandoned wife and mother of two young girls running wild on the muddy foreshore, whose domestic predicament, as it deepens, will draw this disparate community together.A novel the Booker judges deemed "flawless," Offshore is one of Fitzgerald's greatest triumphs.

"A delectable comedy of manners." --Boston Globe The Ridolfi are a Florentine family of long lineage and little money. It is 1955, Italy is still struggling back after the war, and the family, like its decrepit villa and farm, has seen better days. Among the Ridolfi, only eighteen-year-old Chiara shows anything like vitality. But it's a vitality matched by innocence--a dangerous combination, to herself and to all who love her. Chiara sets her heart on the bull-headed Salvatore, a brilliant young doctor from the south who resolved long ago to be emotionally dependent on no one. Stymied, she calls on her resourceful English girlfriend, Barney, to help her make the impossible match. And so ensues a comedy of errors, in which guileless lovers, with the best of intentions, considerable charm, and the kindest of instincts, succeed in making one another thoroughly and astonishingly miserable. "An exquisite mosaic, where every tiny piece is part of a world." --A. S. Byatt, Threepenny Review

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE FEATURED ON BBCâ??S BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB Penelope Fitzgeraldâ??s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.

A fascinating collection of letters from the great English novelist – and prolific correspondent – Penelope Fitzgerald. Acclaimed for her exquisitely elegant novels – including the Booker Prize-winning ‘Offshore’ – and superb biographies, Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the finest British authors of the last century. Published here for the first time are her collected letters. An unparalleled record of the life of this greatly admired writer, these letters reveal her most important family relationships and friendships, and paint a clear picture both of herself and of her correspondents. They show us how she managed her own career – according to her own convictions – and how determined she was to put her world view across. A fascinating portrait of Penelope Fitzgerald as a mother, as a friend and as a writer, these letters give the same pleasure they gave to those who first opened them. Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most distinctive voices in British literature. The prize-winning author of nine novels, three biographies and one collection of short stories, she died in 2000.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HERMIONE LEE The previously uncollected occasional prose of a great English writer - full of wit, feeling and illumination.