Penelope Fitzgerald's fascinating porttrait of Bloomsbury's saddest poet. Charlotte Mew (1869--1928) was a poet with a formidable reputation who, as Virginia Woolf put it, was 'very good and interesting and unlike anyone else' and who wrote some of the best English poems of the twentieth century. In her private life, to all appearances, she was a dutiful daughter living at home with a monster of an old mother. The proprieties had to be observed and no one must know that the Mews had no money, that two siblings were insane and that Charlotte was a secret lesbian, living a life of self-inflicted frustration. Despite literary success and a passionate, enchanting personality, eventually the conflicts within her drove her to despair, and she killed herself by swallowing household disinfectant. In this unexpectedly gripping portrait, Penelope Fitzgerald brings all her novelist's skills into play, giving us what Victoria Glendinning calls a 'tantalising, touching story!an entire life's emotional history in a short space'.

Penelope Fitzgerald

London: Flamingo

Fourth Estate

Mills & Boon

Pavilion

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

New edition, FR, 2014

London, 2002, ©1984

Penelope Fitzgerald's fascinating portrait of the tragic poet and her life at the heart of the Bloomsbury set. Thomas Hardy hailed her as 'far and away the best living woman poet'; the formidable Charlotte Mew (1869'1928) was the writer of some of the best English poems of the twentieth century. In her private life, to all appearances, Mew was a dutiful daughter living at home with her elderly mother. But this respectable facade hid painful truths ' the Mews were penniless, two siblings had been declared insane and Charlotte was secretly lesbian, living a life of self-inflicted frustration. Despite literary success and a passionate, enchanting personality, eventually the conflicts within her drove her to despair, and she killed herself by swallowing household disinfectant. In this gripping portrait, Penelope Fitzgerald brings all her novelist's skills into play, giving us touching story, and an entire life's emotional history

305 pages ; 20 cm
Originally published: London : Collins, 1984
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-289) and index

2023-06-28