British · 1916–2000
Penelope Fitzgerald began publishing novels at sixty and won the Booker Prize at sixty-three for "Offshore" (1979), a slim novel about houseboats on the Thames. Her subsequent work—"The Bookshop," "The Beginning of Spring," "The Gate of Angels," "The Blue Flower"—established her as one of the finest English novelists of her generation. Fitzgerald's books are short; her sentences do multiple jobs; her sympathy extends to everyone. She died in 2000.