FITZGERALD, Penelope ~ The Gate of Angels. Signed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Collins, London: 1990.

8vo., black boards lettered in gilt to spine with publisher's device to foot; dark green endpapers; in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (£12.95 net) featuring an angel with a harp; taken from a photograph by Georges Gaud; THE BOOK fine; THE WRAPPER also fine, the tiniest of creases and rubbing to folds the only defects. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, first printing. This copy signed by the author to the upper margin of title page. One of four historical novels published at the end of Fitzgerald's career, after she "had finished writing about the things in my own life, which I wanted to write about." Other books written around this time were set in Italy, Moscow and Germany. 'The Gate of Angels' was her penultimate work, and is set in 1912 at St Angelicus, a fictional Cambridge University college. Fitzgerald had been inspired to write about Cambridge in the 1910s after researching her family history for 'The Knox Brothers', an essay she published in 1977. Her uncle had been a Classics scholar, and a contemporary of M. R. James. The protagonist of 'The Gate of Angels', Fred, and his provost Dr Matthews (a medievalist, paleographer and author of ghost stories), can be seen as loosely based on these two characters. The plot follows Fred as he wakes up after a bike accident in bed with a stranger and fellow casualty Daisy Saunders. Fitzgerald once claimed that this book was the only one of her novels to have a happy ending. The work was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in the year of publication.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Fine
JACKET: Fine