Penelope Fitzgerald - Free Library Land Online - Reference

The Blue Flower

Fri, 25 Nov 2016 20:37:24 +0200

New to ebook: from the Booker Prize-winning author of 'Offshore' and 'Innocence' comes this unusual romance between the poet Novalis and his fiancÃ©e Sophie. Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, The Blue Flower is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father's permission to announce his engagement to his 'heart's heart', his 'true Philosophy', twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so? One of the most admired of all Penelope Fitzgerald's books, The Blue Flower was chosen as Book of the Year more than any other in 1995. Her final book, it confirmed her reputation as one of the finest novelists of the century.

The Knox Brothers

Sat, 25 Nov 2000 20:37:18 +0200

Penelope Fitzgerald, the Booker Prize-winning author of 'Offshore' and 'The Blue Flower', turns her attention to the story of her remarkable family. When I was very young I took my uncles for granted, and it never occurred to me that everyone else in the world was not like them.' Penelope Fitzgerald turns her novelist's gaze on the quite extraordinary lives of her father and his three brothers. Edmund Knox, her father, was one of the most successful editors of Punch. Dillwyn, 'Dilly', a Cambridge Greek scholar, was the first to crack the Enigma code and in so doing, is estimated to have shortened the Second World War by six months. Wilfred became a priest and welfare worker in the East End of London. Ronald was Roman Catholic chaplain to Oxford University's student body, preacher, wit, scholar, crime-writer and translator of the Bible. A homage to a long-forgotten world and a fascinating account of the generation straddling the divide between late Victorian and Edwardian.

The Gate of Angels

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:37:19 +0200

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.

Offshore

Sat, 25 Nov 2000 20:37:20 +0200

This Booker Prize-winning novel from the author of 'The Blue Flower' is set among the houseboat community of the Thames. 'Offshore' is a dry, genuinely funny novel, set among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide of the Thames on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither… Maurice, a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can't get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore. She feels drawn to Richard, the ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? With this and other questions waiting to be answered, 'Offshore' offers a delightful glimpse of the workings of an eccentric community.

Edward Burne-Jones

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:37:24 +0200

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...

The Golden Child

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:37:16 +0200

The Golden Child, Penelope Fitzgerald's first work of fiction, is a classically plotted British mystery centred around the arrival of the 'Golden Child' at a London museum. Far be it for the hapless Waring Smith, junior officer at a prominent London museum, to expect any kind of thanks for his work on the opening of the year's biggest exhibition – The Golden Child. But when he is nearly strangled to death by a shadowy assailant and packed off to Moscow to negotiate with a mysterious curator, he finds himself at the centre of a sinister web of conspiracy, fraudulent artifacts and murder... Her first novel and a comic gem, 'The Golden Child' is written with the sharp wit and unerring eye for human foibles that mark Penelope Fitzgerald out as a truly inimitable author, and one to be cherished.

So I Have Thought of You

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 20:37:17 +0200

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 most admired authors in Britain during the last century. 'So I Have Thought Of You' is an invaluable addition her distinguished oeuvre. Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most distinctive voices in British literature. The prizewinning author of nine novels, three biographies, and one collection of short stories, she died in 2000.

Human Voices

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:37:22 +0200

Newly available in ebook â?? from the Booker Prize-winning author of 'Offshore' and 'The Blue Flower', this is the funny and touching story of Broadcasting House during the Blitz. The human voices of Penelope Fitzgerald's novel are those of the BBC in the first years of the World War II, the time when the Concert Hall was turned into a dormitory for both sexes, the whole building became a target for enemy bombers, and in the BBC â?? as elsewhere â?? some had to fail and some had to die. It does not pretend to be an accurate history of Broadcasting House in those years, but 'one is left with the sensation', as William Boyd said, reviewing it in the 'London Magazine', 'that this is what it was really like.'

Innocence

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:37:17 +0200

Stunning modern new cover reissue of one of Penelope Fitzgerald's best-loved novels Innocence is set in the 1950s, when Italy was picking up the pieces after the war. Chiara Ridolfi is the guileless daughter of a decrepit Italian family. Barney is her practical English girlfriend, who can sum up a man, she says, in one firm hand-grip. Salvatore is a penniless doctor from the south, who thinks he is proof against politics, social conscience and tenderness. Chiara's cousin, Cesare, says very little, which gives him time to think...

The Means of Escape

Mon, 25 Nov 1991 20:37:16 +0200

A collection of Penelope Fitzgerald's short stories. Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most highly-regarded writers on the English literary scene. Apart from Iris Murdoch, no other writer has been shortlisted so many times for the Booker. Her last novel, 'The Blue Flower', was the book of its year, garnering extraordinary acclaim in Britain, America and Europe. This superb collection of stories, originally published in anthologies and newspapers, shows Penelope Fitzgerald at her very best. From the tale of a young boy in 17-century England who loses a precious keepsake and finds it frozen in a puddle of ice, to that of a group of buffoonish amateur Victorian painters on a trip to Brittany, these stories are characteristically wide ranging, enigmatic and very funny. They are each miniature studies of the endless absurdity of human behaviour.

Charlotte Mew

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:37:19 +0200

Penelope Fitzgerald's fascinating portrait of the tragic poet and her life at the heart of the Bloomsbury set. Virginia Woolf hailed her as 'very good and interesting and unlike anyone else'; Charlotte Mew (1869--1928) was a poet with a formidable reputation, the writer of some of the best English poems of the twentieth century. In her private life, to all appearances, Mew was a dutiful daughter living at home with her elderly mother. But this respectable façade hid painful truths -- the Mews were penniless, two siblings had been declared insane and Charlotte was secretly lesbian, living a life of self-inflicted frustration. Despite literary success and a passionate, enchanting personality, eventually the conflicts within her drove her to despair, and she killed herself by swallowing household disinfectant. In this gripping portrait, Penelope Fitzgerald brings all her novelist's skills into play, giving us touching story,...

The Beginning of Spring

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:37:21 +0200

Newly available as an ebook, from the Booker prize-winning author of 'Offshore' comes this Booker prize-shortlisted tale of a troubled Moscow printworks. Frank Reid had been born and brought up in Moscow. His father had emigrated there in the 1870s and started a print-works which, by 1913, had shrunk from what it was when Frank inherited it. In that same year, to add to his troubles, Frank's wife Nellie caught the train back home to England, without explanation. How is a reasonable man like Frank to cope? How should he keep his house running? Should he consult the Anglican chaplain's wife? Should he listen to the Tolstoyan advice of his chief book-keeper? How do people live together, and what happens when, sometimes, they don't?

The Bookshop

Thu, 25 Nov 1999 20:37:22 +0200

New to ebook: from the Booker Prize-winning author of 'Offshore' and 'The Blue Flower' comes this Booker Prize-shortlisted story of books and busybodies in East Anglia. This, Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel, was her first to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is set in a small East Anglian coastal town, where Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. 'She had a kind heart, but that is not much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.' Hardborough becomes a battleground, as small towns so easily do. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. This is a story for anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

At Freddie's

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:37:23 +0200

From the Booker Prize-winner of 'Offshore' comes this entertaining tale of a chaotic stage school and its singular headmistress. With a new introduction by Simon Callow. It is the 1960s, in London's West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School. 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. At Freddie's is a wickedly droll comedy of the theatre and its terminally eccentric devotees.