Penelope Fitzgerald

Excellent… [Hermione] Lee is a perfect choice as Fitzgerald’s biographer. She has done a superb job, capturing an elusive personality and a complex, sometimes rather harrowing story. – Philip Hensher * Guardian *
Lee elucidates the depth of [Fitzgerald’s] achievement, and ties it enthrallingly to a life and personality more complex and difficult than anyone imagined. In a perfect literary biography, Lee plumbs the creative mind beneath that persona, tracing the metamorphosis of messy experience into crystalline art. * Financial Times *
Brilliant and passionate…a haunting tale of blighted hope, personal tragedy and rare, late fulfilment. Thanks to this sympathetic biography, [Fitzgerald’s] afterlife shows signs of becoming finally blessed with understanding, admiration and respect. – Robert McCrum * Observer *
Admirable and perceptive… Hermione Lee non-judgmentally excavates this extraordinary life. Her biography is very good indeed – Susan Hill * The Times *
A worthy monument to one of the finest English novelists of the second half of the 20th century – Jonathan Derbyshire * Prospect *
Adroitly executed and meticulously researched… insightful… Ms Lee’s shrewd examination makes this a riveting biography * Economist *
Lee’s absorbing biography is the story of a late starter… [She] is partisan in her project: she means to expose a truth she is certain of – that Fitzgerald is “a great English writer”. Her feat is to have woven an involving narrative out of such a skeletal life….Excellent…. – Nicholas Shakespeare * Telegraph *
This book will hold insights and treats for any admirer of [Fitzgerald’s] fiction, and recruit converts to this reticent, witty, ferocious champion of the utterly downtrodden. – Emma Townshend * Independent *
Her book is in the very best tradition of critical literary biography. Phenomenally well researched and elegantly written, with a fine, dynamic fluency and lucid understanding, this is a very good biography indeed. * The Tablet *
This elegant, richly researched biography tells a tale of misfortunes borne with dignity, humour and courage, and finally of quiet triumphs – Michèle Roberts * i *

Hermione Lee is a biographer, critic, and teacher of literature. Her previous books include the internationally acclaimed biography, Virginia Woolf (described as ‘One of the most impressive biographies of the decade: moving, eloquent, powerful’ by the Financial Times) and Edith Wharton (‘A feat of exhaustive research… a glorious biography’ by the Independent on Sunday), as well as books on Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather and Philip Roth. Her collection of essays on life-writing, Body Parts, was published in 2005, and her Biography: A Very Short Introduction in 2009.

She is the President of Wolfson College Oxford. In 2013 she was made a Dame for services to Literary Scholarship. She lives in Oxford and Yorkshire.

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