"Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer-many say the greatest in recent years-whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty. Her life moved from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, from a life of teaching and obscurity to a blaze of renown. Her novels are short, spare masterpieces: subtle and intensely evocative. The early works draw on Fitzgerald's own experiences-working at the BBC in wartime; at a failing bookshop in Suffolk; at...