In 1997 Penelope Fitzgerald's novel The Blue Flower was named one of the New York Times Book Review's eleven Best Books of the Year. Winner of the 1979 Booker Prize for Offshore, Fitzgerald was also short-listed for the Booker for The Bookshop. The Beginning of Spring, and The Gate of Angels. Penelope Fitzgerald lives in England.
Frank Kermode (1919–2010) was a British literary critic who taught English literature at University College London, the University of Cambridge, Columbia University, and Harvard University. His criticism was regularly featured in the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and he was the author of many books including The Sense of an Ending; The Classic; The Genesis of Secrecy; and, most recently, Concerning E. M. Forster. Kermode was knighted in 1991.