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The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower
Penelope Fitzgerald, who died in 2000, emerged late in life as one of the most remarkable English writers of the last century. The three novels in this volume all display her characteristic wit, intellectual breadth and narrative brilliance, applied to the different traditional forms into which she breathed new life.
The Bookshop is a contemporary comedy of manners, set in a provincial town. In The Gate of Angels romance is combined with the novel of ideas; while The Blue Flower revitalizes historical drama in a study of the eighteenth-century German writer Novalis.
Fitzgerald being the genius of the relevant detail and the deftly sketched conceptual context, each book conjures up a different world in a few vivid pages which remain etched on the memory.
The Bookshop is a contemporary comedy of manners, set in a provincial town. In The Gate of Angels romance is combined with the novel of ideas; while The Blue Flower revitalizes historical drama in a study of the eighteenth-century German writer Novalis.
Fitzgerald being the genius of the relevant detail and the deftly sketched conceptual context, each book conjures up a different world in a few vivid pages which remain etched on the memory.
602 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
11 people are currently reading
437 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Fitzgerald
44 books786 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 - 30 of 31 reviews
September 17, 2011
I am re-reading 'The Blue Flower' at the moment. It is based on the life of the German Romantic poet Fritz von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis. The book is extremely well-researched and Penelope Fitzgerald writes these short novels superbly well
January 2, 2019
- The Bookshop ★★★★☆
- The Gate of Angels ★★★★★
- The Blue Flower ★★☆☆☆
- The Gate of Angels ★★★★★
- The Blue Flower ★★☆☆☆
June 24, 2011
The Bookshop is a gem. Fitzgerald's richly detailed look at the crusty foibles of a small town lays bare the stubborn reasons life remains the same as human weakness insists on familiar failure and vigorously rejects anything that smacks of the new. Devoid of the usual smart aleck self-assurance that accompanies a jaundiced view of village traditions, this tale of thwarted aspirations is nevertheless completely aware that rural tradition is not an unmixed blessing. Fitzgerald exercises remarkable restraint and control in crafting pungent sentences compiled in short chapters that capture the essence. If small town fiction is a genre, it's fascinating, albeit a tad embarrassing to contrast the British and American versions. Fitzgerald dry, lean, sharp, a telling as crisp as a bite of cilantro; the average American counterpart by contrast, blobby, overblown, striving for effect, drenched in BBQ sauce lest someone miss the point. Ouch to our comparative English language traditions, even if, to be sure, there are exceptions among our gringo best.
May 4, 2012
I am reviewing only The Bookshop at this time and will revise the review for the other two stories in this collection at a later time.
I enjoyed the tone of The Bookshop and found the subject very absorbing. It is set in 1959 and written in 1978, and the description of this particular clash of ideas seems very relevant today. The seemingly ordinary middle class widow Florence Green decides to purchase an ancient house in her small town and open the town's only bookshop. Through this project and the lending library that she adds to it, she stirs up a new public interest in books. Of course much of the small town public eye remains focused on Florence herself. Fighting against Florence's success is an aristocratic woman who had planned to open an arts center in the ancient building. The aristocrat's single-minded goal continues as she employees her powerful connections to create obstacles for Florence.
The story speaks to me as one of people who feel they are serving the public interest but really are only serving their own wants, when their selfishness turns the situation so that the "public interest" is actually "serving" them.
Fitzgerald's rich, detailed writing style propels the story. She has a natural understanding of the characteristics of people interacting within society.
I enjoyed the tone of The Bookshop and found the subject very absorbing. It is set in 1959 and written in 1978, and the description of this particular clash of ideas seems very relevant today. The seemingly ordinary middle class widow Florence Green decides to purchase an ancient house in her small town and open the town's only bookshop. Through this project and the lending library that she adds to it, she stirs up a new public interest in books. Of course much of the small town public eye remains focused on Florence herself. Fighting against Florence's success is an aristocratic woman who had planned to open an arts center in the ancient building. The aristocrat's single-minded goal continues as she employees her powerful connections to create obstacles for Florence.
The story speaks to me as one of people who feel they are serving the public interest but really are only serving their own wants, when their selfishness turns the situation so that the "public interest" is actually "serving" them.
Fitzgerald's rich, detailed writing style propels the story. She has a natural understanding of the characteristics of people interacting within society.
July 2, 2014
5 Stars for The Bookshop; 3.5 Stars for The Gate of Angels; 1 Star for The Blue Flower.
The Bookshop is a masterpiece of a novella. I think it may be flawless. Mrs. Green, a widow in England in the late 1950's, wants to open up a bookshop in her sleepy seaside town. Who ever would have thought that this could be a situation so fraught with intrigue, political manipulation, back-stabbing, and rancor? It is, but the story's arc builds so gracefully and inevitably, that nothing seems quite significant -- until it is. A glorious little gem of a story.
The Gate of Angels is an entirely different sort of story. Now, Ms. Fitzgerald has set her characters in pre-WWI England in what I suppose must be called a love story between a Junior Fellow at Cambridge and a disgraced nurse. The first part of the story seems bent to go one way -- toward a contemplation of epistemology, metaphysics, and the potential conflict between science and religion; then, part two introduces the nurse Daisy, and all that philosophical stuff is dropped in favor of her more engaging personal story; part the third sort of throws an ending together that doesn't really work for me. It was a strange tale, but one that held my interest.
The last novella in this collection, The Blue Flower was a real snore. Apparently at the end of the 18th Century, there was a German Romantic who wrote under the pen name Novalis. OK. And Ms. Fitzgerald apparently decided that his personal story was compelling enough that she needed to fictionalize it and thrust it into the public's attention. Except, it's not. Spoiler alert. This German dude, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) roamed hither and thither over Deutschland on an old horse -- a horse so old and decrepit that everyone who encountered it deemed it necessary to comment upon its ancient decrepitude. Now he's at school, now he's at home, now he is apprenticed to a tax collector, now he is studying Salt. In between these ramblings, we meet his annoying family (a herd of people of either indiscriminate personalities or repellant ones) and he meets an insipid twelve-year-old girl and falls "in love." It's not quite Humbert Humbert territory (Hardenberg is 22 at the time), but it's still kind of eew. The rest of the book is more about how he continues to go all about, not doing much, while his young fiancée slowly falls ill and dies. And that's the book, folks. There. I have saved you a few hours of time.
The Bookshop is a masterpiece of a novella. I think it may be flawless. Mrs. Green, a widow in England in the late 1950's, wants to open up a bookshop in her sleepy seaside town. Who ever would have thought that this could be a situation so fraught with intrigue, political manipulation, back-stabbing, and rancor? It is, but the story's arc builds so gracefully and inevitably, that nothing seems quite significant -- until it is. A glorious little gem of a story.
The Gate of Angels is an entirely different sort of story. Now, Ms. Fitzgerald has set her characters in pre-WWI England in what I suppose must be called a love story between a Junior Fellow at Cambridge and a disgraced nurse. The first part of the story seems bent to go one way -- toward a contemplation of epistemology, metaphysics, and the potential conflict between science and religion; then, part two introduces the nurse Daisy, and all that philosophical stuff is dropped in favor of her more engaging personal story; part the third sort of throws an ending together that doesn't really work for me. It was a strange tale, but one that held my interest.
The last novella in this collection, The Blue Flower was a real snore. Apparently at the end of the 18th Century, there was a German Romantic who wrote under the pen name Novalis. OK. And Ms. Fitzgerald apparently decided that his personal story was compelling enough that she needed to fictionalize it and thrust it into the public's attention. Except, it's not. Spoiler alert. This German dude, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) roamed hither and thither over Deutschland on an old horse -- a horse so old and decrepit that everyone who encountered it deemed it necessary to comment upon its ancient decrepitude. Now he's at school, now he's at home, now he is apprenticed to a tax collector, now he is studying Salt. In between these ramblings, we meet his annoying family (a herd of people of either indiscriminate personalities or repellant ones) and he meets an insipid twelve-year-old girl and falls "in love." It's not quite Humbert Humbert territory (Hardenberg is 22 at the time), but it's still kind of eew. The rest of the book is more about how he continues to go all about, not doing much, while his young fiancée slowly falls ill and dies. And that's the book, folks. There. I have saved you a few hours of time.
March 5, 2008
I bought this book because it was $7.95 at the Strand, and the first paragraph hooked me. It was eight dollars very well spent.
Fitzgerald writes with an economy of language I have never encountered before. She reminded me initially of Virginia Woolf, but the more I read her the more she becomes an entity without comparison. She is famous for her ability to evoke in their completeness widely different worlds and lives: the bookstore, the barge-dwellers, the BBC... Each of her books sounds like the creation of one who has "been there", and in many cases she has.
Perhaps the most ringing endorsement I can give is that she is one of the precious few authors who can communicate what feels like the bare essence of an entire human life in one short paragraph. It's nothing short of breathtaking.
Fitzgerald writes with an economy of language I have never encountered before. She reminded me initially of Virginia Woolf, but the more I read her the more she becomes an entity without comparison. She is famous for her ability to evoke in their completeness widely different worlds and lives: the bookstore, the barge-dwellers, the BBC... Each of her books sounds like the creation of one who has "been there", and in many cases she has.
Perhaps the most ringing endorsement I can give is that she is one of the precious few authors who can communicate what feels like the bare essence of an entire human life in one short paragraph. It's nothing short of breathtaking.
September 29, 2025
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, author of three novels shortlisted for The Booker Prize, including The Beginning of Spring http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/08/s...
9 out of 10
My first encounter with the marvelous world created by Penelope Fitzgerald was when I have read the stupendous Offshore http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/03/o... winner of the 1979 Booker Prize, when the favorite was A Bend In The River by wondrous VS Naipaul, and when the jury could not decide between this and another competitor, somehow Offshore became the surprise of the triumph, albeit after one reads it, there is no doubt as to magnificence of the magnum opus.
Another masterpiece by phenomenal Penelope Fitzgerald is The Gate of Angels http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/10/t... also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a love story that enchants the reader, which has the ultimate hero, romantic figure inside, the man who would do anything for the woman he loves, the very definition of adoration and the role model.
The Blue Flower was somehow less of a joy than expected, a statement that in itself explains the ‘diminishing returns’, for having gained the habit to except perfection from this fabulous writer, one should apply the happiness rule ‘lower your expectations’, understand that there is another aspect, the Hedonic Adaptation Effect that we must take into account, and finally, the narrative can be sublime, but not for everyone.
We are invited to learn more about Friedrich von Hardenberg, before he became known as Novalis, the period between 1790 and 1797, and his main dream ‘I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see The Blue Flower…it lies incessantly at my heart and I can imagine and think of nothing else…in the world I used to live in, who would have troubled himself about flowers’, as well as his infatuation with Sophie von Kuhl.
The Freiherr von Hardenberg is the father of our protagonist, born in 1738, owner of some properties, but most of them plagued by debts and incapable to finance the son, who writes to say that he cannot make do with the small allowance he has during his studies…the Freiherr has served in the Hanoverian Legion.
That was for seven years, after the peace was declared he gave up his commission and married, his young wife died of smallpox and then married again, to a woman that has property, they worship with The Moravian Brethren, their religiosity affects the way they live, quite humbly, and the values they have
Even when young, Fritz aka Friedrich was a rebellious child, sent home because he ‘asked questions, but was unwilling to receive the answers…insisted that the body is not flesh, but the same stuff as the soul’…the Freiherr was the Director of the Salt mines (aristocrats were not allowed to take menial jobs) but the family has financial problems and he has to sell four properties an still find it difficult to maintain a certain standard of living
A private tutor is called for Fritz, who is then sent to his uncle and then returned to his home yet again – from that time, there is the issue that there were no women, hence the amusing, but also sobering, tragic question ‘who does the washing then’, in other words, discrimination in absolute terms
This is a time when the French Revolution accuses the king of treason and that causes the Freiherr to say that they have gone mad and he will not have a newspaper in his home, until ‘the French return to their senses’…later, when his father is aware of events and the question is how does he know it, Fritz says ‘maybe it is osmosis’
Father and son have a difference of opinion over the studies, for the parent wants law, and generally he wishes his son to work at the Salt Mines, while the younger man registers for philosophy and history, in the former he attends the lectures of Fichte on Kant, ‘we are free to imagine what the world is like and there is no reason to believe in the fixed reality of things’ says the professor, while Fritz identifies the flaw.
Love is missing and that is the flaw in the system of Fichte, generally, we see the student adopt a rather Panglossian view http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/12/c... while Pangloss said the ‘world is the best it can be’, the future Novalis believes that the golden age will return.
Besides, there is nothing evil in the world…however, he might have to change that view, considering the involution of his love story- he meets the twelve years old Sophie, something that will be called pedophilia today becomes the effort to gain over, eventually marry the very young girl, who is really a child.
She is not suited for him in quite a few ways, apart from her tender age, or at least that is the view of quite a few members of his family, and some friends, who see the child as plain, lacking spark, intelligence – when Fritz summons a painter for her portrait, the artist is unable to do his work, for he sees no question, he is not challenged by the girl and abandons the project, thus the would be husband has to use a miniature for the ring he intends to give her when/if they become man and wife
The hero calls his betrothed his Philosophy, in reference to her name and the love of wisdom aka Sophia that is involved in the Greek name, the love affair – if we can call love what she feels, never mind his infatuation, for the girl is too young to understand it – is inauspicious, to say the least, for the bride-to-be falls severely ill…
The Bookshop http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/t...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
9 out of 10
My first encounter with the marvelous world created by Penelope Fitzgerald was when I have read the stupendous Offshore http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/03/o... winner of the 1979 Booker Prize, when the favorite was A Bend In The River by wondrous VS Naipaul, and when the jury could not decide between this and another competitor, somehow Offshore became the surprise of the triumph, albeit after one reads it, there is no doubt as to magnificence of the magnum opus.
Another masterpiece by phenomenal Penelope Fitzgerald is The Gate of Angels http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/10/t... also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a love story that enchants the reader, which has the ultimate hero, romantic figure inside, the man who would do anything for the woman he loves, the very definition of adoration and the role model.
The Blue Flower was somehow less of a joy than expected, a statement that in itself explains the ‘diminishing returns’, for having gained the habit to except perfection from this fabulous writer, one should apply the happiness rule ‘lower your expectations’, understand that there is another aspect, the Hedonic Adaptation Effect that we must take into account, and finally, the narrative can be sublime, but not for everyone.
We are invited to learn more about Friedrich von Hardenberg, before he became known as Novalis, the period between 1790 and 1797, and his main dream ‘I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see The Blue Flower…it lies incessantly at my heart and I can imagine and think of nothing else…in the world I used to live in, who would have troubled himself about flowers’, as well as his infatuation with Sophie von Kuhl.
The Freiherr von Hardenberg is the father of our protagonist, born in 1738, owner of some properties, but most of them plagued by debts and incapable to finance the son, who writes to say that he cannot make do with the small allowance he has during his studies…the Freiherr has served in the Hanoverian Legion.
That was for seven years, after the peace was declared he gave up his commission and married, his young wife died of smallpox and then married again, to a woman that has property, they worship with The Moravian Brethren, their religiosity affects the way they live, quite humbly, and the values they have
Even when young, Fritz aka Friedrich was a rebellious child, sent home because he ‘asked questions, but was unwilling to receive the answers…insisted that the body is not flesh, but the same stuff as the soul’…the Freiherr was the Director of the Salt mines (aristocrats were not allowed to take menial jobs) but the family has financial problems and he has to sell four properties an still find it difficult to maintain a certain standard of living
A private tutor is called for Fritz, who is then sent to his uncle and then returned to his home yet again – from that time, there is the issue that there were no women, hence the amusing, but also sobering, tragic question ‘who does the washing then’, in other words, discrimination in absolute terms
This is a time when the French Revolution accuses the king of treason and that causes the Freiherr to say that they have gone mad and he will not have a newspaper in his home, until ‘the French return to their senses’…later, when his father is aware of events and the question is how does he know it, Fritz says ‘maybe it is osmosis’
Father and son have a difference of opinion over the studies, for the parent wants law, and generally he wishes his son to work at the Salt Mines, while the younger man registers for philosophy and history, in the former he attends the lectures of Fichte on Kant, ‘we are free to imagine what the world is like and there is no reason to believe in the fixed reality of things’ says the professor, while Fritz identifies the flaw.
Love is missing and that is the flaw in the system of Fichte, generally, we see the student adopt a rather Panglossian view http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/12/c... while Pangloss said the ‘world is the best it can be’, the future Novalis believes that the golden age will return.
Besides, there is nothing evil in the world…however, he might have to change that view, considering the involution of his love story- he meets the twelve years old Sophie, something that will be called pedophilia today becomes the effort to gain over, eventually marry the very young girl, who is really a child.
She is not suited for him in quite a few ways, apart from her tender age, or at least that is the view of quite a few members of his family, and some friends, who see the child as plain, lacking spark, intelligence – when Fritz summons a painter for her portrait, the artist is unable to do his work, for he sees no question, he is not challenged by the girl and abandons the project, thus the would be husband has to use a miniature for the ring he intends to give her when/if they become man and wife
The hero calls his betrothed his Philosophy, in reference to her name and the love of wisdom aka Sophia that is involved in the Greek name, the love affair – if we can call love what she feels, never mind his infatuation, for the girl is too young to understand it – is inauspicious, to say the least, for the bride-to-be falls severely ill…
The Bookshop http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/t...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
March 21, 2024
The Blue Flower
A historical novel, set, in Jena, Prussia, and various other locations in the vicinity. The story takes place during the late 18th century with themes of :
"…German romantic philosophy and inconvenient love …" ... the Guardian . com books…
It's about Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg (1772-1801), the Romantic era poet (Novalis), and his love for Sophie von Kuhn (1782-1797), a young girl whom he meets while he is training to be a manager of the family's Saxony area salt works.
Sadly, Sophie died of a liver abscess as a complication of pulmonary tuberculosis. She had had to endure (three) operations without anesthesia to no effect (and with little to no understanding of the matter). Fritz also died at a young age, a few year's later, of cystic fibrosis.
Fritz family did not approve of the relationship in part because of her lack of educational abilities and social status. She was also very young at the time (twelve years old):
"... Friedrich, has entangled himself with a young woman of the middle classes."
Sophie's bravery finally warmed her to them enough for Fritz's father to make a magnanimous, though rather empty, gesture towards her at what turned out to be the end of her life:
"The Bernhard thought that it did take away from it a little."
Jacob Dietmahler, Fritz's friend (studied together in Jena), open the story at a washday at Fritz's house in Weissenfels.
As the "(almost)" Deputy Assistant to the Professor of Medicine, Jacob comes back to haunt Sophie in Jena with his lack of practical good sense (contrast the washing) and that of the medical profession, in their decisions about Sophie (in early untested medical practices):
"... was not such a fool that he could not see that they had arrived at his friend's home on the washday."
...and ...
"I don't question the Professor's (Stark) prognosis."
(Jacob's father was a plasterer. His siblings have died from illness (two brothers (scarlet fever), a sister from consumption).
By this time (washday), Fritz has studied at three universities (Jena, Leipzig, Wittenberg/law)
and learnt about the salt business and met Sophie (but she is not in her final illness).
The title's blue flower comes from Fritz's novel fragment: Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800). Searching for the blue flower has symbolic meanings attached to it such as transcendence, yearning and passion "…intellectual creativity … what you want in life…".
Penelope Fitzgerald's life is interesting in relation to the story too. The author had to make a big effort to prioritize her writing aspirations after spending her life looking after her husband (shell-shocked from WW2) and children.
Her writing career and literary works are mirrored the book's story about the Romantic period with its military background and, more positively, its artistic innovations.
The book's presentation of Novalis's attitude towards the women in his life (Karoline Just, Fredericke) is relevant to the author's own experiences of misogyny (negative comments by publishers and other authors).
Penelope Fitzgerald maintains a sense of determination, practicality and positivity.
Quoting various blogs about the book: "it's a plea for sympathy, for courage and for understanding" and it demonstrates "pity and kindness".
"Her imagination might have been especially fired up by Italy, Russia and Germany, but she declared herself a typically English novelist because “most English people think life is not important enough to be tragic and too serious to be comic.” minorliteratures.com.
The Romantic period began roughly around 1798 and lasted until 1837.
There was the French Revolution and other social changes in people's work (industrialization and colonialism) and family life such as the role of women, education and medical advances.
There was a growing awareness of the value of pursuing literary (and other) self-fulfilling goals that were not easily attainable. Conversely, the widespread destructiveness of European war maneuvers (Prussian military disasters).
Additionally, the book captures the more ethereal qualities of the Romantic era's literature.
Particularly evocative are memories of Schloben-bei-Jena ("through the pearly dusk which filled the main hall you could see the distant lighted kitchen at the end of a cavernous passageway" ...
... and the foreshadowing of forthright Bernhard's death: "that he preferred to live by the river."
These are two books in the library cover the topic in further detail:
1.
Magnificent rebels : the first romantics and the invention of the self
by Wulf, Andrea, author.
Edition: First American edition.
Publisher, Date: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2022]
2.
Jena 1800 : the republic of free spirits
by Neumann, Peter, 1987- author.
.........
Notes
Born May 2, 1772, in Oberwiederstedt, Germany, toward the twilight of the Enlightenment, his schooling coincided with the tumultuous Storm and Stress period of German literature.
Here he steeped himself in the works of Friedrich von Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and finally forged his intellectual maturity in the furnace of the Kantian or Critical philosophy.
Above all, Novalis belonged to that extraordinarily talented younger generation of writers and thinkers who have become known in history as the “Romantic Circle.”
This enormously influential group also included the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Caroline Schlegel, and the young Friedrich von Schelling.
Gathered at the end of the eighteenth century, their innovative literary talents generated an avalanche of essays, fragments, dialogues, speeches, and notebooks, whose revolutionary shock waves still continue to reverberate today throughout the literary, cultural, and artistic worlds. Wikipedia.
.....
Father
Freiherr von Hardenberg b. 1738 bought his house (in Weissenfels) from the widow von Pilsach.
Director of the Salt Mining Administration of Saxony (1784). AT Weissenfels, bought the house in the KlosterGasse in 1786. Member of the nobility.
Properties of Oberwiederstadt on the river Wipper in the county of Mansfeld (once a convent), manor and farm of Schloben-bei-Jena. Worshiped with the Moravian brethren.
Seven Years’ War: Hanoverian Legion.
Peace of Paris.
Married, but in the 1769 epidemic of smallpox, Wipper, wife died.
Moravian Brethren - dead, awakened, or converted.
1770 remarried, to Auguste (below).
Schooling/work of his children:
1.Brethren of Neudietendorf - between Erfurt and Gotha, colony of Herrnhut … Moravians, refugees from persecution, had been allowed to settle down in peace …
2.Tutor from Leipzig.
3.Universities
4.Salt mine.
......
Mother
Auguste Bernhardine (née von Böltzig) (1749–1818). Eleven children:
1.Charlotte (1771), plain. House of Maidens, married, Lausitz.
2.Fritz Hardenberg (1772), wide-eyed.
3.Erasmus (1775), stumpy… profound religious conversion … but I have not...
4.Sidonie, open-hearted.
5.Karl, easy going.
6.Anton, painstaking.
7.August Wilhelm Bernhard (1788), angel.
8. Benigna (born at Schloben)
9.Christof, baby
10. Unnamed
11. "
.....
Uncle
...Wilheim (1728-1800), Lucklum, Duchy of Braunschweig. Governor of the Saxon division of the German Order of Knighthood.
Sophie's grandfather.
William von Kuhn had bought the Manor House of Grüningen and Nieder-Topfstedt, in 1743. William also acquired a patent of nobility.
Sophie's father, mother and step-father:
Johann von Kuhn’s wife was Sophie Wilhelmine Schaller.
Their children are:
George von Kuhn
Hans von Kuhn
Friederike von Mandelsloh.
Christiane Wilhelmine Sophie von Kühn (1782-1797), daughter of Johann von Kuhn,
In 1787, Sophie Wilhelmine Schaller (Sophie’s mother) married Herr Johann Rudolf von Rockenthien, formerly Captain in the army of his Highness Prince Schwarzburg-Sondeshausen.
Rockenthien and Schaller are parents of: Jette, Rudi, Mimi and Gunter.
.......
Fritz's writing:
The young man lay restlessly on his bed and remembered the stranger and his stories. ‘It was not the thought of the treasure which stirred up such unspeakable longings in me,’ he said to himself. ‘I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower. It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think about nothing else. Never did I feel like this before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if sleep had carried me into another world …’
‘What is the meaning of the blue flower?’ asks Fritz again and again. The meaning of the blue flower is hard to pinpoint, which is, ironically, the whole point. The blue flower is symbolic of a vague inexpressible yearning for the infinite, a Romantic emblem of love and striving.
I started from D.H. Lawrence’s ‘fatal flower of happiness’ at the end of The Fox, having always wondered how DHL knew it was blue … blog notes.
......
Thoughts from Penelope Fitzgerald about the sensible women in the book:
"Frau Leutnant Mandelsloh, the elder sister and counterpart of Sophie von Kuhn, Novalis’s young betrothed, and Karoline Just, the niece and household caretaker of Novalis’s teacher, Coelestin Just are the:
...voice of reason, logic and understanding against their more facetious male companions"
… wisdom, insight … not passed over …
Karoline and Mandelsloh are the only two characters who perceive its true significance.
... “art of using the sense world at will”
... an object of nature that he as subject transforms into a work of art through thought.
…object is further suggested through Novalis’ treatment of the two women in the novel who convey the strongest sense of subjecthood, Karoline and the Mandlesloh…
…brushes off their intellectual receptiveness … doting … what other voices have been silenced… love story… tragedy …
It is the unabsolved failure of Novalis’ recognition of Karoline and Mandelsloh as equals. The tragedy is the intellectual rejection and silencing of their understanding of, and contributions to, Novalis’ ideas. … those who are overlooked …
... “Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.” (The Blue Flower, exerted from Fragmente und Studien, 1799–1800) With The Blue Flower, Fitzgerald evidently suggests that the historical negation of women’s voices is ... Blog notes.
A historical novel, set, in Jena, Prussia, and various other locations in the vicinity. The story takes place during the late 18th century with themes of :
"…German romantic philosophy and inconvenient love …" ... the Guardian . com books…
It's about Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg (1772-1801), the Romantic era poet (Novalis), and his love for Sophie von Kuhn (1782-1797), a young girl whom he meets while he is training to be a manager of the family's Saxony area salt works.
Sadly, Sophie died of a liver abscess as a complication of pulmonary tuberculosis. She had had to endure (three) operations without anesthesia to no effect (and with little to no understanding of the matter). Fritz also died at a young age, a few year's later, of cystic fibrosis.
Fritz family did not approve of the relationship in part because of her lack of educational abilities and social status. She was also very young at the time (twelve years old):
"... Friedrich, has entangled himself with a young woman of the middle classes."
Sophie's bravery finally warmed her to them enough for Fritz's father to make a magnanimous, though rather empty, gesture towards her at what turned out to be the end of her life:
"The Bernhard thought that it did take away from it a little."
Jacob Dietmahler, Fritz's friend (studied together in Jena), open the story at a washday at Fritz's house in Weissenfels.
As the "(almost)" Deputy Assistant to the Professor of Medicine, Jacob comes back to haunt Sophie in Jena with his lack of practical good sense (contrast the washing) and that of the medical profession, in their decisions about Sophie (in early untested medical practices):
"... was not such a fool that he could not see that they had arrived at his friend's home on the washday."
...and ...
"I don't question the Professor's (Stark) prognosis."
(Jacob's father was a plasterer. His siblings have died from illness (two brothers (scarlet fever), a sister from consumption).
By this time (washday), Fritz has studied at three universities (Jena, Leipzig, Wittenberg/law)
and learnt about the salt business and met Sophie (but she is not in her final illness).
The title's blue flower comes from Fritz's novel fragment: Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800). Searching for the blue flower has symbolic meanings attached to it such as transcendence, yearning and passion "…intellectual creativity … what you want in life…".
Penelope Fitzgerald's life is interesting in relation to the story too. The author had to make a big effort to prioritize her writing aspirations after spending her life looking after her husband (shell-shocked from WW2) and children.
Her writing career and literary works are mirrored the book's story about the Romantic period with its military background and, more positively, its artistic innovations.
The book's presentation of Novalis's attitude towards the women in his life (Karoline Just, Fredericke) is relevant to the author's own experiences of misogyny (negative comments by publishers and other authors).
Penelope Fitzgerald maintains a sense of determination, practicality and positivity.
Quoting various blogs about the book: "it's a plea for sympathy, for courage and for understanding" and it demonstrates "pity and kindness".
"Her imagination might have been especially fired up by Italy, Russia and Germany, but she declared herself a typically English novelist because “most English people think life is not important enough to be tragic and too serious to be comic.” minorliteratures.com.
The Romantic period began roughly around 1798 and lasted until 1837.
There was the French Revolution and other social changes in people's work (industrialization and colonialism) and family life such as the role of women, education and medical advances.
There was a growing awareness of the value of pursuing literary (and other) self-fulfilling goals that were not easily attainable. Conversely, the widespread destructiveness of European war maneuvers (Prussian military disasters).
Additionally, the book captures the more ethereal qualities of the Romantic era's literature.
Particularly evocative are memories of Schloben-bei-Jena ("through the pearly dusk which filled the main hall you could see the distant lighted kitchen at the end of a cavernous passageway" ...
... and the foreshadowing of forthright Bernhard's death: "that he preferred to live by the river."
These are two books in the library cover the topic in further detail:
1.
Magnificent rebels : the first romantics and the invention of the self
by Wulf, Andrea, author.
Edition: First American edition.
Publisher, Date: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2022]
2.
Jena 1800 : the republic of free spirits
by Neumann, Peter, 1987- author.
.........
Notes
Born May 2, 1772, in Oberwiederstedt, Germany, toward the twilight of the Enlightenment, his schooling coincided with the tumultuous Storm and Stress period of German literature.
Here he steeped himself in the works of Friedrich von Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and finally forged his intellectual maturity in the furnace of the Kantian or Critical philosophy.
Above all, Novalis belonged to that extraordinarily talented younger generation of writers and thinkers who have become known in history as the “Romantic Circle.”
This enormously influential group also included the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Caroline Schlegel, and the young Friedrich von Schelling.
Gathered at the end of the eighteenth century, their innovative literary talents generated an avalanche of essays, fragments, dialogues, speeches, and notebooks, whose revolutionary shock waves still continue to reverberate today throughout the literary, cultural, and artistic worlds. Wikipedia.
.....
Father
Freiherr von Hardenberg b. 1738 bought his house (in Weissenfels) from the widow von Pilsach.
Director of the Salt Mining Administration of Saxony (1784). AT Weissenfels, bought the house in the KlosterGasse in 1786. Member of the nobility.
Properties of Oberwiederstadt on the river Wipper in the county of Mansfeld (once a convent), manor and farm of Schloben-bei-Jena. Worshiped with the Moravian brethren.
Seven Years’ War: Hanoverian Legion.
Peace of Paris.
Married, but in the 1769 epidemic of smallpox, Wipper, wife died.
Moravian Brethren - dead, awakened, or converted.
1770 remarried, to Auguste (below).
Schooling/work of his children:
1.Brethren of Neudietendorf - between Erfurt and Gotha, colony of Herrnhut … Moravians, refugees from persecution, had been allowed to settle down in peace …
2.Tutor from Leipzig.
3.Universities
4.Salt mine.
......
Mother
Auguste Bernhardine (née von Böltzig) (1749–1818). Eleven children:
1.Charlotte (1771), plain. House of Maidens, married, Lausitz.
2.Fritz Hardenberg (1772), wide-eyed.
3.Erasmus (1775), stumpy… profound religious conversion … but I have not...
4.Sidonie, open-hearted.
5.Karl, easy going.
6.Anton, painstaking.
7.August Wilhelm Bernhard (1788), angel.
8. Benigna (born at Schloben)
9.Christof, baby
10. Unnamed
11. "
.....
Uncle
...Wilheim (1728-1800), Lucklum, Duchy of Braunschweig. Governor of the Saxon division of the German Order of Knighthood.
Sophie's grandfather.
William von Kuhn had bought the Manor House of Grüningen and Nieder-Topfstedt, in 1743. William also acquired a patent of nobility.
Sophie's father, mother and step-father:
Johann von Kuhn’s wife was Sophie Wilhelmine Schaller.
Their children are:
George von Kuhn
Hans von Kuhn
Friederike von Mandelsloh.
Christiane Wilhelmine Sophie von Kühn (1782-1797), daughter of Johann von Kuhn,
In 1787, Sophie Wilhelmine Schaller (Sophie’s mother) married Herr Johann Rudolf von Rockenthien, formerly Captain in the army of his Highness Prince Schwarzburg-Sondeshausen.
Rockenthien and Schaller are parents of: Jette, Rudi, Mimi and Gunter.
.......
Fritz's writing:
The young man lay restlessly on his bed and remembered the stranger and his stories. ‘It was not the thought of the treasure which stirred up such unspeakable longings in me,’ he said to himself. ‘I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower. It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think about nothing else. Never did I feel like this before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if sleep had carried me into another world …’
‘What is the meaning of the blue flower?’ asks Fritz again and again. The meaning of the blue flower is hard to pinpoint, which is, ironically, the whole point. The blue flower is symbolic of a vague inexpressible yearning for the infinite, a Romantic emblem of love and striving.
I started from D.H. Lawrence’s ‘fatal flower of happiness’ at the end of The Fox, having always wondered how DHL knew it was blue … blog notes.
......
Thoughts from Penelope Fitzgerald about the sensible women in the book:
"Frau Leutnant Mandelsloh, the elder sister and counterpart of Sophie von Kuhn, Novalis’s young betrothed, and Karoline Just, the niece and household caretaker of Novalis’s teacher, Coelestin Just are the:
...voice of reason, logic and understanding against their more facetious male companions"
… wisdom, insight … not passed over …
Karoline and Mandelsloh are the only two characters who perceive its true significance.
... “art of using the sense world at will”
... an object of nature that he as subject transforms into a work of art through thought.
…object is further suggested through Novalis’ treatment of the two women in the novel who convey the strongest sense of subjecthood, Karoline and the Mandlesloh…
…brushes off their intellectual receptiveness … doting … what other voices have been silenced… love story… tragedy …
It is the unabsolved failure of Novalis’ recognition of Karoline and Mandelsloh as equals. The tragedy is the intellectual rejection and silencing of their understanding of, and contributions to, Novalis’ ideas. … those who are overlooked …
... “Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.” (The Blue Flower, exerted from Fragmente und Studien, 1799–1800) With The Blue Flower, Fitzgerald evidently suggests that the historical negation of women’s voices is ... Blog notes.
April 9, 2015
Always interesting, intelligent, observant, and brimming with authority about the times and places depicted. Filled with unexpected details and arresting metaphors and similes. But the author is not really a storyteller, in this reader's view, and so these works do not hit the heights that they might have.
January 31, 2018
Penelope, Penelope, Penelope, I love you so - but after three reads (Offshore, The Beginning of Spring, and The Bookshop) - but darling, I am going to have to wish you farewell at this time. Your "Offshore" was simply a pleasure, but after The Beginning of Spring (which I didn't care for at all - but still had nothing but love for ya!) - and, well, now, after reading The Bookshop - which had flashes of the "Offshore" Penelope that I fell in love with IN THE BEGINNING but not so much in the middle and end, I have to say, "I will always treasure you and your trade and craft and treasure - of "Offshore" is safe with me!" but the rest of your novellas are just - I am so, so, SOOOO sorry - drags. Respectful writing, yes, but the stories, just drags. Please don't roll over in your sleep right now, I beg of you, as again, I love you so....but I - respectfully, am done. RIP Penelope Fitzgerald - your soul and your books - I am glad to have met you; you enriched my life and I am grateful. Now I am moving on. Thank you for "Offshore." It was a true gem and I would have loved to have had the pleasure of crossing your path when you still were with us. Warmly, Troy Farlow.
July 15, 2018
Three and a half stars; may be at a disadvantage not being a Brit but The Gate of Angels was a true slice of history and very readable nonetheless. Will be discussing the book with two Brits so am looking forward to their insights. I read The Blue Flower eons ago and the details are fuzzy at this point though I do remember appreciating the book. I think I will skip The Bookshop for now but will likely put it on my TBR pile.
October 27, 2020
A separate review submitted for The Bookshop which I really enjoyed most of the 3 novels in this edition.
The Gate of Angels held my interest with well examined characters and an interesting story.
The Blue Flower - I persevered as I enjoy the author's command of language and historical detail but the story became lost for me.
The Gate of Angels held my interest with well examined characters and an interesting story.
The Blue Flower - I persevered as I enjoy the author's command of language and historical detail but the story became lost for me.
July 15, 2022
Four stars for writing, two stars for heart. I feel robbed. I was expecting a quirky, charming short story about lucky middle-aged women taking on a challenge and invigorating her town. It was funny and quirky, and the writing was clever, but it failed. So depressing. The bookshop failed! Why write this story?
December 27, 2021
I read Bookshop and Blue Flower. First is nice atmospheric satire about small British town. Eccentric townspeople and a woman with a mission, no matter how misplaced. Blue Flower is a more complex study of the life of Novalis an early German Romantic poet.
May 24, 2022
Loved THE BOOKSHOP and THE GATE OF ANGELS. Enjoyed THE BLUE FLOWER, which you can appreciate even if you aren’t super familiar with Novalis, but if you’re a serious Novalis fan this is just the thing for you.
February 6, 2018
Happy endings are not Penelope Fitzgerald's forte. Immensely readable slices of life but ultimately less satisfying than one would have hoped.
July 17, 2024
Sharp observations of human nature +
witty characterizations that sometimes reminded me of Jane Austen. Enjoyable if you’re up for some slower, mid-century fiction.
witty characterizations that sometimes reminded me of Jane Austen. Enjoyable if you’re up for some slower, mid-century fiction.
November 9, 2019
An extraordinary writer writing of ordinary people and events that scintillate in Ms. Fitzgerald’s deft hands. Her loving attention to detail and deep knowledge of historical facts and environments pass almost unnoticed in the swift current of the stories. Her humor is the best of “English dry” and surfaces sometimes on every page, releasing chuckles out loud and adding to the sympathy she requires for all of her characters. A sheer and effortless delight in all respects.
December 30, 2007
Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the Booker Prize for "The Blue Flower," writes short novels (novella size really). Her prose is crystalline clear and her plots interesting in an arcane way. "The Gate of Angels" takes place in Oxford, the year 1912, and the work is one of comedy (as opposed to a tragedy). It focuses on the lives of two young people, Fred, a scientist who comes from an impeccably respectable background, and Daisy, a young woman who comes from an impoverished background who wants to be a nurse. Their story is augmented with extended descriptions of odd characters who inhabit the Oxford College where Fred has a position and the people Daisy encounters in her pursuit of a nursing career. Fitzgerald's characters span the shift from the dominance of religious belief to the dominance of science, from a male dominated society to one in which women will gain the vote, from insular politics to the advent of World War One. Fred and Daisy meet by accident (literally -- a bicycle accident) and more or less fall in love. More on Fred's part, apparently less on Daisy's. For so short a novel, Fitzgerald manages to make every word work at about five different levels.
August 17, 2011
The world is always changing and never more so than at Cambridge University in 1912 as it is on the threshold of world-changing discoveries in physics and more. A young man, a rational man, named Fred Fairly, the only son of a clergyman, is a junior fellow at the university’s smallest college, St. Angelicus, closed to women for 500 years. Fred’s experiences with family, colleagues, and the mysterious, beautiful Daisy Saunders, who literally crashes into his life—bring him into a wider world and to some drastic modifications of his diehard beliefs and ambitions.
In this luminous and sublime novel, Fitzgerald creates a story from apparently irreconcilable strands, from the metaphysical to the religious, with ample mystery, romance, and history thrown in. Atoms and ghosts, angels and villains, certainty and chance, love and jealousy, reason and imagination, all figure prominently in the world within this novel. And a collision between any two of them can change the course of a life, or of life itself. The Gate of Angels is both intelligent and entertaining giving the reader a delightful ride through the world of Britain on the eve of the Great War.
In this luminous and sublime novel, Fitzgerald creates a story from apparently irreconcilable strands, from the metaphysical to the religious, with ample mystery, romance, and history thrown in. Atoms and ghosts, angels and villains, certainty and chance, love and jealousy, reason and imagination, all figure prominently in the world within this novel. And a collision between any two of them can change the course of a life, or of life itself. The Gate of Angels is both intelligent and entertaining giving the reader a delightful ride through the world of Britain on the eve of the Great War.
June 4, 2015
My new favorite author! Somehow I felt that I needed to read "The Blue Flower" (TBF) and the library's copy was out, but they had this volume of three novels which included TBF. Lucky for me, because I was not sure about TBF when I was done. Was it tragic, funny, or both? Or just a waste of my time? But then I read "The Bookshop," which was definitely funny and tragic (hilarious and horrifying might be more accurate). Last but not least, "The Gate of Angels" was funny and massively educational. In fact, part of what makes these books so amazing is how much you learn along the way, but without feeling anything but entertained.
I often had to stop and read a particularly good bit to Tom, he always laughed and enjoyed them. Not sure I can resist the urge to go read the rest of her books immediately. I worry that I will run through them all, and then what? Guess there is always re-reading.
Good thing I didn't find a copy of TBF, or I would have missed all the fun!
I often had to stop and read a particularly good bit to Tom, he always laughed and enjoyed them. Not sure I can resist the urge to go read the rest of her books immediately. I worry that I will run through them all, and then what? Guess there is always re-reading.
Good thing I didn't find a copy of TBF, or I would have missed all the fun!
May 15, 2019
Quotable:
Defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.
There is a continuity of scientific thought. The continuity is now being thrown out the window. Let us hope we shall remember where it is when, at long last, we find that we can’t do without it.
‘Freddy, I’m told that there are left-overs in the larder. Have you any idea what to do with left-overs?’
‘You don’t have to do anything with them. They’re left over from whatever was done with them before.’
It must be said that historians, in my opinion, are excitable people.
A word of advice. If, as a young man, a student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.
Neudietendorf, like the Herrnhut, was a place of tranquility. Wind instruments, instead of bells, summoned the children to their classes.
If a woman keeps working, she will find she is never tired.
Time given to wishing for what can’t be is not only spent, but wasted.
Defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.
There is a continuity of scientific thought. The continuity is now being thrown out the window. Let us hope we shall remember where it is when, at long last, we find that we can’t do without it.
‘Freddy, I’m told that there are left-overs in the larder. Have you any idea what to do with left-overs?’
‘You don’t have to do anything with them. They’re left over from whatever was done with them before.’
It must be said that historians, in my opinion, are excitable people.
A word of advice. If, as a young man, a student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.
Neudietendorf, like the Herrnhut, was a place of tranquility. Wind instruments, instead of bells, summoned the children to their classes.
If a woman keeps working, she will find she is never tired.
Time given to wishing for what can’t be is not only spent, but wasted.
June 23, 2019
The Bookshop (1978) Set in 1959 - Florence Green buys old, haunted, decrepit, property to set up bookshop in small Suffolk town. Interesting read. Project ends badly, partly because Florence "values kindness above everything else" and is no match for powerful and malicious adversaries. Good, convincing portrayal of all characters, including minor ones. 4.5*
The Gate of Angels (1990) Set in 1912, largely around small Cambridge college. Interesting, but I couldn't relate to characters so was disappointing after The Bookshop. 3*
The Blue Flower (1995) Gave up on soon after the beginning. 1*
The Gate of Angels (1990) Set in 1912, largely around small Cambridge college. Interesting, but I couldn't relate to characters so was disappointing after The Bookshop. 3*
The Blue Flower (1995) Gave up on soon after the beginning. 1*
March 30, 2010
I loved The Bookshop! Ms. F. is such a skilled writer, from the first page I was cheering on Florence Green in her quest to open a bookshop in a small English town in 1959. Fortunately I have the volume which includes The Gate of Angels and The Blue Flower so I can keep reading her work.
I liked the Gate of Angels but not as much as The Bookshop and did not read the last story.
I liked the Gate of Angels but not as much as The Bookshop and did not read the last story.
November 12, 2009
I finished reading "The Bookshop" and "The Gate of Angels".
April 3, 2010
My favorite of these three is the Bookshop. Interesting read.
April 10, 2013
What a wonderful author; what wonderful books.
December 9, 2014
Please read my full review here: http://mwgerard.com/review-the-booksh...
November 21, 2015
She is brilliant. That is all.
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January 29, 2017Reread The Bookshop. 1/29/17
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