Penelope Fitzgerald sgs
The novelist Penelope Fitzgerald endured a life of two unequal
halves, of failure followed by success. Put them together – as
Hermione Lee has done in this brilliant and passionate biography –
and you find a haunting tale of blighted hope, personal tragedy and
rare, late fulfilment.
Beyond the poignancy of a long life that began during the great war
and ended in the year 2000, this biography also holds up a cracked
mirror to its century, though its subject might have disdained the idea.
The flip side to Fitzgerald's preference for privacy was an instinctive
refusal to admit any self-regard.
That was bred in the bone. Fitzgerald came from the kind of English
tribe, the Knox family, that was clannish, competitive and defended
against outsiders by private codes and language. Her grandfather was
a bishop. Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin were household gods. Her
journalist father, Edmund, was "Eddie" or "Teddy" or – when he
wrote for Punch – "Evoe" (pronounced "ee-vee"). Penelope, who was
always "Mops", was doomed to domesticity within a paternalistic
world.
Growing up a Knox was a challenge for the young girl. Like many
children with conspicuous relatives, she wanted to do her own thing
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Le portrait magazine