The Afterlife Essays and Criticism

In this generous posthumous collection of literary essays and reviews, Penelope Fitzgerald celebrates the "life beyond life" of dozens of writers, the acclaimed and overlooked alike. Here are Fitzgerald's brilliant introductions to the classics, as well as considerations of more recent novels. Rounded out by travel writings, bits of autobiography, and essays on the craft of fiction, The Afterlife forms one of the most engaging books about books since Virginia Woolf's The Common Reader. As the critic Hermione Lee says in an appreciative introduction, "Penelope Fitzgerald leads us right to the heart of the matter-the feeling of a novel, the nature of a life, the understanding of how something or someone works, the sense of a place or a time," and she does so with justice, humor, grace, and style. Book jacket.

Penelope Fitzgerald (1918-2000) is the author of nine novels, three works of biography, and a posthumously published collection of short fiction. The Blue Flower won the NBCC Award for Fiction and was chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven best books of 1997. Offshore won the Booker Prize, and three of her other novels have made the Booker short list. For almost all her life she lived in London.

Terence Dooley is a poet and the literary executor of the Estate of Penelope Fitzgerald. He lives with his wife, Penelope Fitzgerald's older daughter Tina, in Cornwall, England.

Mandy Kirkby is an editor at Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollins UK. She lives in London.