Since 1977, Penelope Fitzgerald has been quietly coming out with small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (i.e., all-too-human) behavior. This special boxed set comprises her two prize winners, The Blue Flower and Offshore , and her tragicomedy of provincial manners, The Bookshop.

The Blue Flower is the story of Friedrich von Hardenberg--Fritz, to his intimates--a young man of the late 18th century who is destined to become one of Germany's great romantic poets. In just over 200 pages, Fitzgerald creates a complete world of family, friends, and lovers, but also an exhilarating evocation of the Romantic era in all its political turmoil, intellectual voracity, and moral ambiguity. A profound exploration of genius, The Blue Flower is also a charming, wry, and witty look at domestic life.

Offshore possesses perfect, very odd pitch. In the wittiest and most melancholy of prose, Penelope Fitzgerald limns the lives of "creatures neither of firm land nor water"--a group of barge-dwellers in London's Battersea Reach, circa 1961. One man, a marine artist whose commissions have dropped off since the war, is attempting to sell his decrepit craft before it sinks. Another, a dutiful businessman with a bored, mutinous wife, knows he should be landlocked but remains drawn to the muddy Thames. A third, Maurice, a male prostitute, doesn't even protest when a criminal acquaintance begins to use his barge as a depot for stolen goods: "The dangerous and the ridiculous were necessary to his life, otherwise tenderness would overwhelm him."

The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually cut off from the outside English world. Postwar peace and plenty having passed it by, Hardborough is defined chiefly by what it doesn't have. It does have, however, plenty of observant inhabitants, most of whom are keen to see Florence Green's new bookshop fail.

In these three novels, readers will find works of fine prose, fierce intelligence, and perceptive characterization.


Book Description
Gathered together for the first time are three of Penelope Fitzgerald's most beloved novels: The Blue Flower, The Bookshop, and Offshore. The Blue Flower: Chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven best books of 1997, this magical novel recounts the curious obsession of the Romantic poet Novalis for his one "true philosophy" -- the plain and simple twelve-year-old Sophie. "A masterpiece. . . How does she do it?" (A. S. Byatt) "Quite astonishing . . . Her greatest triumph" (New York Times Book Review). The Bookshop: In 1959, Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop -- the only bookshop -- in the seaside town of Hardborough. She must contend with a leaky roof, a poltergeist, and, what's more, ruthless opposition from the self-proclaimed first lady of culture, Violet Gamart. "A brilliant little book" (Boston Globe). Offshore: Winner of the Booker Prize, this acclaimed novel features an eccentric cast of characters living in houseboats on the Thames, rising and falling with the great river's tides. "The novelistic equivalent of a Turner watercolor" (Washington Post).

FROM THE PUBLISHER