Admired by many as one of the leading English novelists of her day, Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) wrote some twelve books of fiction and nonfiction over the course of her writing career; which began at the age of sixty. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for "The Blue Flower" and the Booker Prize for "Offshore". She died on April 28, 2000, at the age of eighty-three.