Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) has been acclaimed as one of the finest British novelists of the late twentieth century. Four of her novels were shortlisted for the Booker Prize and one of them, Offshore (1979), won; her final work of historical fiction, The Blue Flower (1995), won the US National Book Critics' Circle Award. Fitzgerald's works are distinguished by their acute wit, deft handling of emotional tone and an unsentimental yet deeply felt commitment to portraying the lives of those men, women and children 'who seem to have been born defeated'. Admirers have long recognised the brilliance of Fitzgerald's writing, yet the deceptive simplicity of her style invariably leads readers to ask, 'How is it done?' This book seeks to answer that question, providing the first sustained exposition of Penelope Fitzgerald's compositional method, working both inwards from the surface of her writing and outwards from the archival evidence of Fitzgerald's own drafts and working papers.

About the Author
Hugh Adlington is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham where he teaches English Literature across all periods and genres. He is editor (with Peter McCullough and Emma Rhatigan) of The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (2011) and editor (with Tom Lockwood and Gillian Wright) of Chaplains in Early Modern England: Literature, Patronage and Religion (2013). He is editing volume 2 of the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, and is writing a monograph, John Donne's Books: Reading, Writing, and the Uses of Knowledge.

Reviews

'This is a solid contribution to the "Writers and Their Work" series.'

C. Rollyson, CHOICE

Book Information
ISBN 9780746312957
Author Hugh Adlington
Format Paperback
Page Count 168
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press