The Blue Flower [Paperback]

‘An enchanting novel about heart, body and mind. The writing is ellipitical and witty… so that what could be a sad little love story is constantly funny and always absorbing. This novel is a jewel.’ Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph

‘Her sense of time and place is marvellously deft, done in a few words. She knows how they all walked, eased their old joints. She knows the damp smell of decay of the ancient schlosses. In a bare little book she reveals a country and an age as lost as Tolstoy’s Russia and which we seem somehow always to have known.’ Jane Gardam, Spectator

‘Detail, expertly dabbed in, provides a substantial background for the story of a poet which, it is subtly suggested, is also the story of a remarkable moment in the history of civilisation… It is hard to see how the hopes and defeats of Romanticism, or the relation between inspiration and common life, between genius and mere worthiness, could be more deftly rendered than they are in this remarkable novel.’ Frank Kermode, LRB

‘A minor miracle of sympathy and crispness.’ Adam Mars-Jones, Guardian

‘An extraordinary imagining… An original masterpiece.’ Hermione Lee, Financial Times

‘A novel in which the unsaid speaks: it is a masterpiece.’ Candia McWilliam

‘A masterpiece. How does she do it?’ A.S. Byatt

‘A magical little book.’ Doris Lessing

Penelope Fitzgerald’s final masterpiece.

Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, The Blue Flower is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’, twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so?

One of the most admired of all Penelope Fitzgerald’s books, The Blue Flower was chosen as Book of the Year more than any other in 1995. Her final book, it confirmed her reputation as one of the finest novelists of the century.

"Her sense of time and place is marvellously deft, done in a few words. She knows how they all walked, eased their old joints. She knows the damp smell of decay of the ancient schlosses. In a bare little book she reveals a country and an age as lost as Tolstoy's Russia and which we seem somehow always to have known." Jane Gardam, Spectator

"Detail, expertly dabbed in, provides a substantial background for the story of a poet which, it is subtly suggested, is also the story of a remarkable moment in the history of civilisation... It is hard to see how the hopes and defeats of Romanticism, or the relation between inspiration and common life, between genius and mere worthiness, could be more deftly rendered than they are in this admirable novel." Frank Kermode, London Review of Books

"A minor miracle of sympathy and crispness." Adam Mars-Jones, Guardian

"An extraordinary imagining...an original masterpiece." Hermione Lee, Financial Times

"A novel in which the unsaid speaks; it is a masterpiece." Candia McWilliam

"A masterpiece. How does she do it?" A.S. Byatt

"A magical little book." Doris Lessing

"Her limpid, exact prose reflects an unwaveringly clear view of the human predicament. She seems to be one of those rare artists gifted with both the knowledge of how things are, and the skill to record what she knows with s ubtlety and devestating truthfulness." A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard

"An enchanting novel about heart, body and mind. Constantly funny and always absorbing with a cast of characters both endearing and amusing. This novel is a jewel."
CARMEN CALLIL, 'Daily Telegraph'

Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, 'The Blue Flower' tells the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenburg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father's permission to announce his engagement to his 'heart's heart', his 'true Philosophy', twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so?

"A masterpiece. How does she do it?"
'A.S. Byatt'

"Fitzgerald is an intelligent writer, superbly and unfailingly so. But her dry wit is also allied to a great talent for emotional sympathy. A wise and funny novel."
LUCY HUGHES-HALLET, 'Sunday Times'

"An utterly gripping and involving novel"
MICHAEL DIBDIN, 'Independent on Sunday'

Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. Three of her novels, The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her last novel, The Blue Flower, was the most admired novel of 1995, chosen no fewer than nineteen times in the press as the ‘Book of the Year’. It won America’s National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and this helped to introduce her to a wider international readership. She died in April 2000, at the age of 83.