I'm not sure what has kept me from connecting with Fitzgerald's acclaimed novels but luckily I loved the way the warmth and genuineness of her personality radiate from her various personal correspondences.

Structure-wise, someone made the odd decision to organise by recipient rather than by chronology. It does however present a fascinating window into how Fitzgerald presents herself to different people: as a perhaps-romantically-inclined friend, as a mother - interesting to see the slightly different relationships she had to her two daughters, as a now-old childhood friend, &c. However the second half of the collection - mainly letters for work-related purposes - did not interest me as much which I think really could have been corrected by a chronological ordering of the letters with biographical details preceding the letters where necessary.

I just love reading about life in its everyday mundanities. Give me letters/diary entries about which plants in your garden are thriving or dying, complaints about the lack of pebble-rich areas for your pebble-polishing hobby, prayers that the tweed cloth you just bought is enough for the pattern you want to sew, silly asides about the antiquarian club meetings you attend, justification for the aisle seats you got for a play in case your sick husband needs a quick exit, laments about money and work, updates on your inner-circle gossips, plans being made for the rare visit / vacation / meet-up / party.

The life that happens between milestone events, behind the scenes, in private, that's the life for me.

Aside: Fitzgerald's letters never addressed it but I desperately wanted to know: How did she feel about her husband's disbarment for forging cheques which led to their hardscrabble life of poverty? Why did he do it? How did their relationship survive this? And the answers were gleaned from Hermione Lee's biography of Fitzgerald (~pg 154): she rightfully bore a lot of hurt/anger/resentment albeit in silence (either out of loyalty or pride - I lean towards the latter), alcoholism, maybe it didn't (see previous, pride). ( )

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a fine example of the late 20th century British female novelist. After publishing a biography of Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, and a interesting collective study of her four paternal uncles "The Knox Brothers," she turned her hand to short novels, which was her true forte. Short but deep, for Fitzgerald was the master of an allusive sophistication which allows simple prose to carry tremendous meaning.

"So I Have Thought Of You" is a collection of Fitzgerald's correspondence from the 1960s until her death in 2000. The book is lovingly edited by her son-in-law, which is suggestive in itself. (Earlier letters and personal papers were destroyed when the houseboat in which Fitzgerald was living with her husband sunk to the bottom of the Thames!) No real surprises here - Penelope Fitzgerald seems to have been a genuinely nice, grandmotherly person. She had eclectic, far-ranging interests that reveal themselves in the disparate subject matters of her books. (Among the settings and topics of her fictions: Italy in the 1950s, German Romanticism in the early 1800s, pre-Revolutionary Russia, the BBC during World War II.)

While Fitzgerald comes across in the letters as modest and self-effacing, she was no doubt "a tough cookie." (At times I was put in mind of the late Queen Mother.) Her "pose" does not fully obscure the fact that her books are remarkably accomplished and even ambitious in their subtle brilliance. I'm not alone in regarding P. Fitzgerald as a kind of Vermeer of contemporary British fiction. ( )