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The Afterlife: Essays and Criticism
A posthumous collection of literary essays explores the "afterlife" of the writing community, defined as a legacy experienced in the minds and hearts of their readers; in a volume that includes introductions to major works of literature, reviews of fellow authors, and explorations of lesser-known writers.
From the late novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald, a collection of essays-almost all of them unknown to her countless American admirers-on books, travel, and her own life and work. A good book, wrote John Milton, is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. In this generous posthumous collection of her literary essays and reviews, Penelope Fitzgerald celebrates the life beyond life of dozens of master-spirits--their afterlife not only in the pages of their works but in the minds of their readers, critics, and biographers.
Here are Fitzgerald's brilliant introductions to the classics--Jane Austen's Emma , George Eliot's Middlemarch , the works of Mrs. Oliphant --as well as considerations of recent novels by Barbara Pym, Carol Shields, Roddy Doyle, and Amy Tan. Here too are reviews of several late-twentieth-century literary biographies, including Richard Holmes's Coleridge, A. N. Wilson's C. S. Lewis, and Martin Stannard's Evelyn Waugh-reviews that together form a memorable criticism both of life and the art of life-writing.
From the late novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald, a collection of essays-almost all of them unknown to her countless American admirers-on books, travel, and her own life and work. A good book, wrote John Milton, is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. In this generous posthumous collection of her literary essays and reviews, Penelope Fitzgerald celebrates the life beyond life of dozens of master-spirits--their afterlife not only in the pages of their works but in the minds of their readers, critics, and biographers.
Here are Fitzgerald's brilliant introductions to the classics--Jane Austen's Emma , George Eliot's Middlemarch , the works of Mrs. Oliphant --as well as considerations of recent novels by Barbara Pym, Carol Shields, Roddy Doyle, and Amy Tan. Here too are reviews of several late-twentieth-century literary biographies, including Richard Holmes's Coleridge, A. N. Wilson's C. S. Lewis, and Martin Stannard's Evelyn Waugh-reviews that together form a memorable criticism both of life and the art of life-writing.
416 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 2003
About the author
Penelope Fitzgerald
46 books816 followersPenelope Mary Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 14, 2009
Penelope Fitzgerald is an unusual writer – sometimes she can be so flat that her prose appears clunky, then just as you are about to get restless, she springs an observation or a quick, deft rhetorical turn that it takes the top of my head off. She is truly one of my favorites. This collections of essays and knick knacks is a bit of a mixed bag – lots of rather prosaic descriptions of novels – mostly Victorian – that often read more like very intelligent book reports than criticism exactly. They are worth going through for the bits of brilliance in them. The book really gets good at the end when she goes into her biography and her thoughts on being a writer. She reveals a real shocker about a real-life person she based a character on in her novel Offshore which is worth finding if you loved Offshore as much as I did.
She’s one of those writers I’m glad I never met because I am pretty sure she would figure out what an idiot I am after about a minute and a half. Maybe sooner.
She’s one of those writers I’m glad I never met because I am pretty sure she would figure out what an idiot I am after about a minute and a half. Maybe sooner.
July 17, 2021
Delicious. Didn't read it all - it would take another lifetime to become as erudite as Ms. Fitzgerald - but the pieces on the writers I have read (or read about) are wonderful. Tart, smart and wise.
July 4, 2019
This is a great collection of texts written by Fitzgerald, published posthumously. It includes introductions to some classics, reviews of "recent" novels by authors such as Carol Shields, Barbara Pym, Roddy Doyle, Amy Tan, Muriel Spark and Richard Yates, among many others. It also includes some travel writings, essays on the craft of fiction and autobiographical pieces.
Fitzgerald was a wonderful writer. Her quiet, reticent and sometimes cryptic style is not always appreciated. Hermione Lee rightly says that there is always a sense that something is being withheld in her novels. And that may be challenging for some readers. However, I believe this collection of knowledgeable critical texts not only reveals Fitzgerald's sensibility but will engage any reader who loves books about books.
Fitzgerald was a wonderful writer. Her quiet, reticent and sometimes cryptic style is not always appreciated. Hermione Lee rightly says that there is always a sense that something is being withheld in her novels. And that may be challenging for some readers. However, I believe this collection of knowledgeable critical texts not only reveals Fitzgerald's sensibility but will engage any reader who loves books about books.
January 29, 2021
I already liked Penelope Fitzgerald's fiction (books like THE BOOKSHOP), but this posthumous, non-fiction collection, with its generous selection of over 20 years worth of essays and critical reviews, expanded my appreciation. It was fortunate too, it followed my reading of Christopher Hitchens' "Arguably" collection of essays because there are many areas of overlap and interest, both seem fascinated by certain English poets e.g. Blake; W.B.Yeats; W.H.Auden; T.S.Eliot; Ezra Pound; Philip Larkin and writers e.g. George Eliot; Anthony Powell; Rebecca West; Somerset Maugham; Evelyn Waugh; Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell. The tone and critical perspectives of each writer are often quite different but interesting, particularly where they are reviewing the same book. I found the ground they shared, sometimes for quite different reasons also engaging. Their styles are completely distinct, Fitzgerald is never vicious or cruel. Both are erudite, well read deep thinkers and magical writers. They know precisely and efficiently how to tell terrific, enticing stories about all sorts of people.
Fitzgerald is an intelligent, sensitive writer, who sets out her point of view clearly. As a fiction writer she always believed "you should make it clear where you stand" and in this collection we are in no doubt about her position in relation to the subject. She is candid, vivid, exact and pragmatic in her evaluations and has a delightful way of exploring strange, challenging and unsettling things in a very matter-of-fact and sober manner, sometimes as if it were an indisputable truth.
We already know she was a person of strong moral convictions and in her novels focused on "the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities". It is therefore unsurprising she tells stories about forgotten or undervalued historical people particularly women such as Ada Leverson, Olive Schreiner, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Dorothy L.Sayers and so many homosexual men such as Angus Wilson and L.P. Hartley from the forties. Also, she focuses on rhyming poets, less popular today e.g. Tennyson; Christine Rossetti, Edward Lear, Walter de la Mare, Charlotte Mew & A.E.Houseman; and on past movements or magazine which interest her e.g.William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement; the Bloomsbury set (including Dora Carrington & Lydia Lopokova as well as the Woolfs); Punch Magazine; "Yeat's and his circle" (including Maud Gonne, Susan & Elizabeth Yeats as well as George Moore). The book also includes writers she values highly as "witnesses" of their society e.g. Barbara Pym, Muriel Sparks, Amy Tan, Richard Yates, Jung Chang and Victor Klemperor.
Finally, Fitzgerald takes to four places that are precious in her memory: "The Grange" the home of the Burne-Jones family; "The Moors" near the village of Milton Abbot, 6 miles northwest of Tavistock; "Canaletto's Venice" and its meaning for her over the centuries of La Serenissima and "The Holy Land" travelling as a pilgrim, ending up on Palm Sunday beside the northwest shore of Galilee,
"The air was still and cold and the sky, from end to end, was the colour of an opal...the clear water of the lake washes over the stones, grinding them down so much more slowly than the sea, into pebbles...I took one of these pebbles from the edge of the lake and kept it. It was a pale red conglomerate, perfectly flat and smooth and almost a perfect oval. I think it may have some jasper in it, and it shines a little in a good light".
Fitzgerald is reticent about her own beliefs and admires those who have the habit of "not making too much of such things", but we can get glimpses, shining through "in a good light". In her "Life and Letters" section we are treated to far more information about her growing up, family and C.V. as she calls one part, and her places of habitation. She also allows us to see into her craft, explaining how she writes (including plots and dialogue), and why she feels compelled to write, to tell stories and the reality of the need to "make money". She is a feminist as a woman and writer but I found it so strange and disconcerting, even when describing her own writing, she kept referring to the writer by the masculine third person singular. But apart from thist most minor niggle, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially finding out about characters I barely knew or heard about before.
I enjoyed stepping back with her into places such as publisher, Harold Moon's Poetry Bookshop, inhabited by the beautiful, Polish refugee, Alida Klemantski (who was "free" living largely on tea and cigarettes in a single room"). Imagining the lamp lit poetry readings with their animals nestled before the welcoming fire. Fitzgerald kept transporting me through time and place and the journey was delightful.
Fitzgerald is an intelligent, sensitive writer, who sets out her point of view clearly. As a fiction writer she always believed "you should make it clear where you stand" and in this collection we are in no doubt about her position in relation to the subject. She is candid, vivid, exact and pragmatic in her evaluations and has a delightful way of exploring strange, challenging and unsettling things in a very matter-of-fact and sober manner, sometimes as if it were an indisputable truth.
We already know she was a person of strong moral convictions and in her novels focused on "the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities". It is therefore unsurprising she tells stories about forgotten or undervalued historical people particularly women such as Ada Leverson, Olive Schreiner, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Dorothy L.Sayers and so many homosexual men such as Angus Wilson and L.P. Hartley from the forties. Also, she focuses on rhyming poets, less popular today e.g. Tennyson; Christine Rossetti, Edward Lear, Walter de la Mare, Charlotte Mew & A.E.Houseman; and on past movements or magazine which interest her e.g.William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement; the Bloomsbury set (including Dora Carrington & Lydia Lopokova as well as the Woolfs); Punch Magazine; "Yeat's and his circle" (including Maud Gonne, Susan & Elizabeth Yeats as well as George Moore). The book also includes writers she values highly as "witnesses" of their society e.g. Barbara Pym, Muriel Sparks, Amy Tan, Richard Yates, Jung Chang and Victor Klemperor.
Finally, Fitzgerald takes to four places that are precious in her memory: "The Grange" the home of the Burne-Jones family; "The Moors" near the village of Milton Abbot, 6 miles northwest of Tavistock; "Canaletto's Venice" and its meaning for her over the centuries of La Serenissima and "The Holy Land" travelling as a pilgrim, ending up on Palm Sunday beside the northwest shore of Galilee,
"The air was still and cold and the sky, from end to end, was the colour of an opal...the clear water of the lake washes over the stones, grinding them down so much more slowly than the sea, into pebbles...I took one of these pebbles from the edge of the lake and kept it. It was a pale red conglomerate, perfectly flat and smooth and almost a perfect oval. I think it may have some jasper in it, and it shines a little in a good light".
Fitzgerald is reticent about her own beliefs and admires those who have the habit of "not making too much of such things", but we can get glimpses, shining through "in a good light". In her "Life and Letters" section we are treated to far more information about her growing up, family and C.V. as she calls one part, and her places of habitation. She also allows us to see into her craft, explaining how she writes (including plots and dialogue), and why she feels compelled to write, to tell stories and the reality of the need to "make money". She is a feminist as a woman and writer but I found it so strange and disconcerting, even when describing her own writing, she kept referring to the writer by the masculine third person singular. But apart from thist most minor niggle, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially finding out about characters I barely knew or heard about before.
I enjoyed stepping back with her into places such as publisher, Harold Moon's Poetry Bookshop, inhabited by the beautiful, Polish refugee, Alida Klemantski (who was "free" living largely on tea and cigarettes in a single room"). Imagining the lamp lit poetry readings with their animals nestled before the welcoming fire. Fitzgerald kept transporting me through time and place and the journey was delightful.
May 13, 2018
Essays and reviews, all written in her quiet, thoughtful, witty style. Even when writing about the most obscure people (Dora Carrington or Charlotte Mew), she makes you want to seek them out, too. The perfect bed book, and one to return to when reading or re-reading the books she reviews.
February 4, 2016
mostly her reviews of the biographies of notable writers (most of whom I have never read), and some other interesting opinion pieces. Really happy to have read this. If not careful, I may start writing again
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews