Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald, English author and poet (died 2000)

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Born: December 17, 1916
Died: April 28, 2000
Zodiac sign: Sagittarius
Birth year: 1916

About Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention." Fitzgerald later wrote: "When I was young I took my father and my three uncles for granted, and it never occurred to me that everyone else wasn't like them.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Penelope Fitzgerald was born

Penelope Fitzgerald was born in 1916. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1916

Best-selling book"Seventeen" – Booth Tarkington

Headlines and milestones

Major sports momentGeorgia Tech defeats Cumberland 222-0, most lopsided football game ever
Top headlineBattle of the Somme — 1 million casualties
Technology milestoneTanks first used in warfare
Notable inventionMilitary tanks
World population~1.76B

United States snapshot

U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
U.S. population99.6M

1916 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Penelope Fitzgerald's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure	1916	2026
Population	99.6M	341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.