The blue flower

Penelope Fitzgerald’s final masterpiece. One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. The year is 1794 and Fritz, passionate, idealistic and brilliant, is seeking his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’: twelve-year-old Sophie.

His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal.

What can he be thinking? Tracing the dramatic early years of the young German who was to become the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis, The Blue Flower is a masterpiece of invention, evoking the past with a reality that we can almost feel.

Her final book, it confirmed Fitzgerald’s reputation as one of the finest novelists of the 20th century.