So I Have Thought of You
The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald
Edited By Terence Dooley
Preface by A.S. Byatt
Will dich im Traum nicht stören,
Wär schad un deine Ruh.
Sollst meinen Tritt nicht hören –
Sacht, sacht die Türe zu!
Schreib im Vorübergehen
Ans Tor dir: Gute Nacht
Damit du mögest sehen
An dich hab” ich gedacht.
An dich hab” ich gedacht.
Table of Contents
Rachel Hichens and Elizabeth Barnett*
Penelope Fitzgerald and I taught together in the 1960s at the Westminster Tutors, an institution which prepared students, almost all female, for the long-abolished Entrance Exams to Oxford and Cambridge. We sat together in the small staff room on sagging sofas, amid a rich and pervasive smell of old upholstery and decaying dogs. Penelope was contradictory. She could appear vague and self-effacing and was. She could also say formidably knowledgeable and percipient things about literature. She was generous