The Beginning of Spring

The Beginning of Spring

Cover to first edition hardback
Author Penelope Fitzgerald
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Published 1988 (Collins)
Media type Print (Hardback)

The Beginning of Spring is a novel by British author Penelope Fitzgerald. Set in Moscow in 1913, it tells the story of a Moscow-born son of a British emigre manufacturer whose Britain-born wife has suddenly abandoned him and their three children.

Background

Fitzgerald had a strong interest in Russian literature, and starting in the 1960s took courses in Russian language. She toured Moscow and environs in 1975, which included a visit to Tolstoy's house and a dacha in a birch forest.[1]

In the early 1970s, as part of her research on Edward Burne-Jones, Fitzgerald became friends with a Swiss art curator, Mary Chamot, who had been brought up in pre-Revolution Russia. Chamot's family had had a greenhouse business in Moscow since the mid-1800s, and they had stayed on for a few years after the Revolution. The original title of the novel was The Greenhouse.[2]

Character summary

Frank Albertovich Reid
Russian-born of English parents, educated in England, runs a Moscow printing shop he inherited from his father. He is conflicted about returning to England.
Elena Karlovna "Nellie" Reid
Frank's English-born wife, she has abandoned Frank and their three children without leaving a forwarding address, but presumably back in England.
Dolly, Ben, Annushka
Their three children.
Charlie Cooper
Nellie's brother, a widower.
Selwyn Osipych Crane
English-born assistant to Frank. Acolyte of Tolstoy and his ascetic philosophy. Poet, author of Birch Tree Thoughts.
Toma
Servant at the Reid house.
Vladimir "Volodya Vasilych" Semyonovich Gregoriev
A student who breaks into Reid's print shop. State security uses him as a pawn to put pressure on Reid.
Lisa Ivanovna
Peasant girl hired to watch over the children in Nellie's absence.
Egor, Matryona
Couple who were negligent caretakers of the dacha in the forest.
Arkady Kuriatin
Muscovite businessman, filled with wild peasant gusto.
Matryona Osipovna Kuriatin
Arkady's wife.[Note 1]
Muriel Kinsman
An English governess in Russia.
Cecil/Edwin Graham[Note 2]
Chaplain of Moscow's English Church.
Mrs. Graham
The chaplain's wife, she knows all that goes on in the British expatriate community.

Reception

"Its greatest virtue is perhaps the most old-fashioned of all. It is a lovely novel."
— Robert Plunket, New York Times Book Review[3]

BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast a radio adaptation in 2015.[4]

Critical review

The novel has a chapter of its own in Peter Wolfe Understanding Penelope Fitzgerald[5] and Hermione Lee Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life.[6]

Notes

  1. ↑ Wolfe 2004, p. 244 speculates she is Selwyn's sister, since "Osip" (that is, "Joseph") is uncommon.
  2. ↑ He is named Cecil Graham in Chapter 2, and Edwin Graham in Chapter 9.

References

  1. ↑ Lee 2014, p. 330.
  2. ↑ Lee 2014, p. 329.
  3. ↑ Plunket, John (1989-05-07). "Dear, Slovenly Mother Moscow". New York Times Book Review: 15.
  4. ↑ "The Beginning of Spring Omnibus". www.bbc.co.uk. BBC. Retrieved 10 May 2015.
  5. ↑ Wolfe 2004, pp. 212–45.
  6. ↑ Lee 2014, pp. 317–46.

Further reading

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