The Beginning of Spring

First published in 1988, Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring takes place in Moscow in March 1913, in the uneasy final years of Imperial Russia. Frank Reid, a Moscow-born printer of English parentage, returns to his home in Lipka Street to discover that his wife, Nellie, has abruptly left for England, leaving their three young children behind. As Frank attempts to keep his printing business and household in order, the arrival of Lisa Ivanovna, a mysterious young woman from the countryside, unsettles the fragile balance of his life. Around him, eccentric employees, religious idealists and political unrest reveal a city suspended between familiar rituals and the uncertain promise of change.

With characteristic precision, dry humour and an instinct for the extraordinary hidden within ordinary life, Fitzgerald conjures a Moscow both meticulously observed and faintly dreamlike. The novel explores marriage, cultural belonging, faith and the limits of rational understanding, while the thawing streets and lengthening days reflect a world beginning to shift beneath its inhabitants’ feet. Fitzgerald’s remarkable achievement lies in making a vanished historical moment feel immediate without sacrificing its mystery. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1988, The Beginning of Spring is among her most accomplished novels, a subtle and richly atmospheric portrait of private lives unfolding on the brink of public upheaval.

From the book

“In 1913 the journey from Moscow to Charing Cross, changing at Warsaw, cost fourteen pounds, six shillings and threepence and took two and a half days.”

— Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring

On The Beginning of Spring

“The Beginning of Spring is probably her masterpiece.”

— Robert McCrum, The Guardian