---
product_id: 52080777
title: "The Bookshop"
brand: "penelope fitzgerald"
price: "A$27"
currency: AUD
in_stock: true
category: "Books"
url: https://www.desertcart.com.au/products/52080777-the-bookshop
store_origin: AU
region: Australia
---

# The Bookshop

**Brand:** penelope fitzgerald
**Price:** A$27
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Bookshop by penelope fitzgerald
- **How much does it cost?** A$27 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.au](https://www.desertcart.com.au/products/52080777-the-bookshop)

## Best For

- penelope fitzgerald enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted penelope fitzgerald brand quality
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## Description

Review
        	  
        	  
        		  
        			Penelope Fitzgerald&apos;s books are small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (ie, all-too-human) behaviour. The Bookshop unfolds in a tiny Sussex seaside town, which by 1959 is virtually cut off from the outside English world. Post-war peace and plenty having passed it by, Hardborough is defined chiefly by what it doesn&apos;t have. It does have, however, plenty of observant inhabitants, most of whom are keen to see Florence Green&apos;s new bookshop fail.  But rising damp will not stop Florence, nor will the resident, malevolent poltergeist (or &quot;rapper&quot;, in the local patois). Nor will she be thwarted by Violet Gamart, who has designs on Florence&apos;s building for her own arts series and will go to any lengths to get it. One of Florence&apos;s few allies (who is, unfortunately, a hermit) warns her: &quot;She wants an Arts Centre. How can the arts have a centre? But she thinks they have, and she wishes to dislodge you.&quot;  Once the Old House Bookshop is up and running, Florence is subjected to the hilarious perils of running a subscription library, training a 10-year-old assistant and obtaining the right merchandise for her customers. Men favour works &quot;by former SAS men, who had been parachuted into Europe and greatly influenced the course of the war; they also placed orders for books by Allied commanders who poured scorn on the SAS men, and questioned their credentials.&quot; Women fight over a biography of Queen Mary. &quot;This was in spite of the fact that most of them seemed to possess inner knowledge of the court--more, indeed, than the biographer.&quot; But it is only when the slippery Milo North suggests Florence sell the Olympia Press edition of &quot;Lolita&quot; that Florence comes under legal and political fire.  Fitzgerald&apos;s heroine divides people into &quot;exterminators and exterminatees&quot;, a vision she clearly shares with her creator--but the author balances disillusion with grace, wit and weirdness, favouring the open ending over the moral absolute. Penelope Fitzgerald&apos;s internecine if gentle world-view even extends to literature--books are living, jostling things. Florence finds that paperbacks, crowding &quot;the shelves in well-disciplined ranks&quot;, vie with Everyman editions, which &quot;in their shabby dignity, seemed to confront them with a look of reproach.&quot;
				    	
			    	
        		  
        		  
        	
          
              
        	  	  Review
        	  
        	  
        		  
        			&#x2018;Its stylishness, and this low-voiced lack of emphasis are a pleasure throughout, its moral and human positions invariably sympathetic. But it is astringent too: no self-pity in its self-effacing heroine, who in a world of let-downs and put-downs and poltergeists, keeps her spirit bright and her book-stock miraculously dry in the damp, seeping East Anglian landscape.&#x2019; Isabel Quigley, Financial Times&#x2018;Penelope Fitzgerald&#x2019;s resources of odd people are impressively rich. Raven, the marshman, who ropes Florence in to hang on to an old horse&#x2019;s tongue while he files the teeth; old Brundish, secretive as a badger, slow as a gorse bush. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives; these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated&#x2026;On any reckoning, a marvellously piercing fiction.&#x2019; Valentine Cunningham, TLS
				    	
			    	
        		  
        		  
        	
          
              
        	  	  Synopsis 
        	  
        	  
        		  
        			New jacket re-issue of Penelope Fitzgerald&apos;s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel This, Penelope Fitzgerald&apos;s second novel, was her first to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is set in a small East Anglian coastal town, where Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. &apos;She had a kind heart, but that is not much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.&apos; Hardborough becomes a battleground, as small towns so easily do. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. This is a story for anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.
				    	
			    	
        		  
        		  
        	
          
              
        	  	  From the Publisher
        	  
        	  
        		  
        			Shortlisted for the Booker Prize&quot;Its stylishness, and this low-voiced lack of emphasis are a pleasure throughout, its moral and human positions invariably sympathetic. But it is astringent too: no self-pity in its self-effacing heroine, who in a world of let-downs and put-downs and poltergeists, keeps her spirits bright and her book-stock miraculously dry in the damp, seeping East Anglian landscape.&quot; Isabel Quigley, Financial Times&quot;Penelope Fitzgerald&apos;s resources of odd people are impressively rich. Raven, the marshman, who ropes Florence in to hang on to an old horse&apos;s tongue whle he files the teeth; old Brundish, secretive as a badger, slow as a gorse bush. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives: these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated... On any reckoning, a marvellously piercing fiction.&quot; Valentine Cunningham, TLS
				    	
			    	
        		  
        		  
        	
          
              
        	  	  From the Back Cover
        	  
        	  
        		  
        			&quot;A gem, a vintage narrative&#x2026;a classic whose force as a piece of physical and moral map-making has not merely lasted but has actually improved in the passage of years.&quot;&apos;New York Times&apos;In the small East Anglian coastal town of Hardborough, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.Hardborough quickly becomes a battleground &#x2013; for Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done. As a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.&quot;Penelope Fitzgerald&apos;s resources of odd people are impressively rich. And this is not just a gallery of quirky still lives; these people appear in vignettes, wryly, even comically animated&#x2026;A marvellously piercing fiction.&quot;&apos;TLS&apos;&quot;Solid and satisfying. Every action in it matters, however small.&quot;&apos;Spectator&apos;
				    	
			    	
        		  
        		  
        	
          
              
        	  	  About the Author
        	  
        	  
        		  
        			Penelope Fitzgerald was the author of nine novels, three of which &#x2013; The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels &#x2013; were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the prize in 1979 for Offshore. A superb biographer and critic, she was also the author of lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, the poet Charlotte Mew and The Knox Brothers, a study of her remarkable family. She died in April 2000.

## Images

![The Bookshop - Image 1](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51r9bOvVEqL.jpg)
![The Bookshop - Image 2](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51lwYr30HPL.jpg)
![The Bookshop - Image 3](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31b%2BbLcDUyL.jpg)

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*Product available on Desertcart Australia*
*Store origin: AU*
*Last updated: 2026-03-04*