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...