Her first five novels are all set in England, in the present or the recent past. She had written a couple of biographies and, as she amiably stresses in biographical notes and interviews, brought up three children. She had a varied professional life before she took up novels. Since then, three of her nine novels have been short-listed for the Booker Prize in England, and her ''Offshore'' won the PENELOPE FITZGERALD'S first novel was published in 1977, when she was already 60. The plan was always only for a marriage when she was older than 16, a not abnormal age for marriage in these days.The New York Times: Book Review Search Article There has been some criticism lately about the description of the love of Novalis for what is at that moment only a 12-year old girl, but we should not look at it with the eyes of today. If only he or she would have… but it did not happen. A small misunderstanding results in a missed opportunity for happiness and fulfillment, without the subject even realising it, and only as reader we realise how a second of remorse for a missed chance, a faint and ‘little’ feeling, represents a subbconscious feeling of a life taking a path leading to ultimate unhappiness. It is something that is also striking in another of her novels, The Bookshop, and it shows how minute, almost unconsciously taken decisions can have repercussions for the rest of our life.
The second is the great pity she has for her subjects. Fitzgerald does not write about big history, she just describes how these new things touch quite ordinary people, and you can feel the fatigue of the Ancien Régime and the impatience of the young generations for the new times. The first is her talent of catching the atmosphere of a period in time, here the end of the 18th century, when Europe is in turmoil and changing, with the French Revolution still happening and Germany a still not-united assembly of independent states. This particularly well written historical novel brings two of the strongest points of Fitzgerald’s writing together. It looks into the years 1790 to 1797 when he was still a student, and especially into his infatuation with the 12-year old Sophie von Kühn who he meets at the home of the Rockenthien family and his immediate decision to marry her. The story is about a part of the life of the poet Novalis (1772-1801), real name Friedrich von Hardenberg, a Jena Romanticist. Penelope Fitzgerald is one of the greatest post-war English writers, with two remarkable talents: both shine very clear in this beautiful book.
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