Items related to The Knox Brothers

Fitzgerald, Penelope The Knox Brothers ISBN 13: 9781582431635

The Knox Brothers - Softcover

 
9781582431635: The Knox Brothers
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
A biography of the four very different sons of the Evangelical Bishop of Manchester. Ronald Knox was the translator of the Bible and a Catholic priest, Eddie was the editor of Punch, Dillwyn worked as a cryptographer and Wilfred became an Anglo-Catholic priest and active welfare worker.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
Penelope Fitzgerald's novels expertly map the unquiet heart. But so, too, do her three biographies, all of which mingle truth and tact, wit and documentary power. The Knox Brothers, first published in 1977, is suffused with rich, right strangeness and sad delight. Fitzgerald begins her group portrait of her father and three uncles a few generations back, establishing on the Knox side a tradition of religious fervor, dominant fathers, and invalid mothers. The Frenches were equally ecclesiastical but not so dour, her great-grandfather Thomas perhaps the most extraordinary of the lot: he ended his days wandering through Arabia preaching Christ's love. (In the end, "agents of the Sultan, who deeply respected the strange old fakir, were deputed to keep watch over him, but they could do nothing when they found him insensible, still with a book in his hand.")

We would gladly spend more time among these ancients, but this is the story of four sons--two of them agnostic, the other two deeply religious--born to Edmund and Ellen Knox between 1881 and 1886. Edmund George Valpy, Fitzgerald's father, would go on to edit Punch under the sobriquet Evoe. Alfred Dillwyn was first a classical scholar and then a world-class cryptographer. Wilfred Lawrence was concerned above all with poverty and inequity and made his life as an Anglo-Catholic priest. And, lastly, Ronald Arbuthnott, too, devoted his life to God, causing great familial distress by converting to Catholicism. (As a young boy, he would perform funeral rites for dead birds while sporting his sister Ethel's "pinafore for a surplice.") Raised in an era in which Anglicanism and Empire held sway, the brothers were blessed with a bright beginning in Leicestershire:

All the children were so happy there that in later years they could cure themselves of sleeplessness simply by imagining that they were back at Kibworth.... They were completely safe in the large nursery at the top of the back stairs, looking down into the kitchen garden, where in memory it was always summer, with the victoria plums ripening on the south wall. Their father mounted his stout horse, Doctor, to set off on his parish visits, and their dearly loved mother waved from an upper window.
This is only one beautiful passage among many in The Knox Brothers, and very characteristic as it weaves between sharp description and never-never-land nostalgia. Alas, it also points forward to irreparable change. First their father was granted a larger, less bucolic diocese in industrial Birmingham, and next their mother died too soon, in 1892.

The Knox Brothers is as acute as it is affectionate. Whether Fitzgerald is describing "slumbrous" turn-of-the-century Oxford or an infinitely more advanced Cambridge circa 1903--or Ronnie's 1951 private audience with the Pope, during which these men of the cloth mostly discussed the Loch Ness monster--she effortlessly evokes vanished worlds. She can also paint an entire relationship in a short space. As Dilly lay dying, his wife "nursed him devotedly. These two people had loved each other for twenty years without being able to make each other happy. They would have given the world, now they were at the point of separation, to understand one another." There is everything to savor in such scenes, so revealing of character and (perhaps) class. All four brothers, even as they grew into their separate visions, never lost their love for one another, and worked their wild talents as hard as was humanly possible. About the only enigma these intellectuals and devoted practical jokers could never resolve--and Penelope Fitzgerald makes us wonder if any of us can--was "an inner struggle between reason and emotion, and between emotion and the obligation not to show it." --Kerry Fried

About the Author:
Penelope Fitzgerald was one of England's most celebrated contemporary writers-winning both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Booker Prize. She died in April 2000, at the age of eighty-three.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherCounterpoint
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 1582431639
  • ISBN 13 9781582431635
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number2
  • Number of pages304
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780007118304: The Knox Brothers

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780007118304
Publisher: Flamingo, 2002
Softcover

  • 9781582430959: The Knox Brothers

    Counte..., 2000
    Hardcover

  • 9780333194263: The Knox brothers

    Reader..., 1977
    Hardcover

  • 9780002720977: The Knox Brothers

    Harnol..., 1991
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Meadowland Media
(Tontitow, AR, U.S.A.)

Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # M122-KS-L-122622-218

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 33.85
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 40.06
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.25
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
LibraryMercantile
(Humble, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # newMercantile_1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 41.38
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 40.94
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.50
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 40.15
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.30
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 40.53
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Grumpys Fine Books
(Tijeras, NM, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Prompt service guaranteed. Seller Inventory # Clean1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 40.38
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.25
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GF Books, Inc.
(Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory # 1582431639-2-1

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 55.65
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fitzgerald, Penelope
Published by Counterpoint (2001)
ISBN 10: 1582431639 ISBN 13: 9781582431635
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.98. Seller Inventory # Q-1582431639

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 61.17
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.13
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds