The Means of Escape (First Edition)

Fitzgerald, Penelope

ISBN 10: 0618079947 / ISBN 13: 9780618079940

Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2000

About this Item

First edition, first printing (full number line including 1). Quarter black cloth over rust-colored paper-covered boards, spine lettered in gilt. 8vo. 547 pp. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Original price ($18.00) present on front flap. A clean, tight copy. Protected in an archival-quality mylar jacket cover. A collection of stories, including the title story about an escaped convict, a minister's daughter, and a servant in 19th-century Tasmania. Published posthumously in 2000, this collection brings together eleven stories written between 1975 and 1998, including the title story, "The Axe," "The Red-Haired Girl," "Beehernz," and "Worlds Apart.".

Seller Inventory # Fiction-Fitzgerald-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Means of Escape (First Edition)
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, Boston
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618079947
• ISBN 13: 9780618079940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Dimensions: 5W x 8H x 0.7D inches 5 inches width by 8 inches height by 0.7 inches depth
• Weight: 0.9 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

A collection of stories skips across the globe from England to New Zealand between the seventeenth century and the modern day, exploring the shifting fortunes of class and wealth.

About the Author

Penelope Fitzgerald wrote many books small in size but enormous in popular and critical acclaim over the past two decades. Over 300,000 copies of her novels are in print, and profiles of her life appeared in both The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. In 1979, her novel OFFSHORE won Britain's Booker Prize, and in 1998 she won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for THE BLUE FLOWER.

Though Fitzgerald embarked on her literary career when she was in her 60's, her career was praised as "the best argument.. for a publishing debut made late in life" (New York Times Book Review). She told the New York Times Magazine, "In all that time, I could have written books and I didn’t. I think you can write at any time of your life."

Dinitia Smith, in her New York Times Obituary of May 3, 2000, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald from 1998 as saying, "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"