Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life - Softcover

"A triumph. . . . Any admirer of Penelope Fitzgerald's work--or, for that matter, any passionate reader--will enjoy this capacious, masterly biography." --The Washington Post

"Excellent. . . . Riveting. . . . Will send you racing back to read the subject's works." --The New York Times

"[A] superbly intelligent biography. . . . Remarkable. . . . A revelation." --The New Yorker

"A championing critical biography. . . . Richly illuminating. . . . It is, very movingly, a picture of a whole past life . . . with a reverence for her subject that is felt on every page." --The New York Review of Books

"Rarely has a literary biography been more needed or necessary than in Fitzgerald's case. . . . She was a writer of genius. . . . [Lee's] research is meticulous. . . . Her conclusion is a statement of biographical honesty." --The Wall Street Journal

"The life and times of that elusive, original miracle worker, the English novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald, have been brilliantly captured by Lee. . . . [Fitzgerald's] fiction, when it finally emerged, had a tamped-down force and intense compression, as if the decades-long wait had worked its own clarifying, crystallizing magic." --The New York Times Book Review

"[A] sumptuous biography. . . . Thrilling. . . . Pithy. . . . Pleasingly impressionistic." --Slate

"A captivating read about a woman who lived most of her life on the sidelines. . . . With great respect, and an innate sense of the underappreciated, Lee shines a brilliant light on Fitzgerald's long life of making do, and making art in the process." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brilliant . . . Lee catches not only the tempo of each decade, but how values from Fitzgerald's past constantly inform her present." --Financial Times

"Hermione Lee's sensitive, respectful biography traces the life of a woman as elusive and enigmatic as her fiction. . . . Moving. . . . Mak[es] palpable the weight of experience Fitzgerald transmuted into fiction of such remarkable grace and deceptive ease." --Newsday

"Gloriously illuminates the separate talents of two distinguished ladies of letters." --The Economist

"Marvelous. . . . Brilliant. . . . Master biographer Hermione Lee illuminates the life of Fitzgerald." --The Seattle Times

"Literary biography at its best--a masterly discussion of the work of that fine novelist." --Penelope Lively

"Deliriously entertaining. . . . Beautifully evoked. . . . [Lee's] intense, close-up analyses of each book would have thrilled Fitzgerald." --The Sunday Times (London)

"The biography of the year, an extraordinary portrait of an English literary life." --Robert McCrum, The Observer (London)

"Richly satisfying . . . It will send you back to the subject's own piquant and elusive novels."
--Hilary Mantel

"Excellent . . . Lee was a perfect choice as Fitzgerald's biographer. She has done a superb job, capturing an elusive personality and a complex, sometimes rather harrowing story." --The Guardian (London)

"A luminous masterpiece of life-writing . . . Lee's magisterial work is inseparable from warmth, intimacy, humaneness, and love for the subject of her biography." --New Statesman

"This book will hold insights and treats for any admirer of her fiction, and recruit converts to this reticent, witty, ferocious champion of the utterly downtrodden." --The Independent on Sunday

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A Best Book of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times
Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography

Penelope Fitzgerald, one of the most quietly brilliant novelists of the twentieth century, was a great English writer whose career didn’t begin until she was nearly sixty. Her life was marked by dramatic twists of fate, moving from a bishop’s palace to a sinking houseboat to a last, late blaze of renown. Her exquisite novels—short, spare masterpieces—would go on to win some of the most coveted awards in literature: the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in an impeccable match of talent between biographer and subject, Hermione Lee gives us this remarkable writer’s story.