Sometimes you read a biography as much for its author as for its subject. That’s true for the masterful Hermione Lee; following rich portraits of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, Lee brings her insight to the life, times, and work of Penelope Fitzgerald (Knopf, $35). Daughter of a Punch editor who grew up amid thinkers and artists, Fitzgerald (1916-2000) said she was born “dipped in ink” and expected to become a writer herself. Early contributions to her father’s magazine, writing and editing for World Review journal, and scriptwriting for the BBC put her on track to fulfill her promise. But writing was interrupted by decades of poverty. Fitzgerald’s husband was an alcoholic and spectacularly lost his position as a barrister. The family moved into a converted coal barge. After it sank, they spent eleven years in council housing. Fitzgerald raised three children, taught school, and stayed with her husband. Only in 1975 did she become the Penelope Fitzgerald we know, turning out three biographies and nine short, elegant novels, four of them short-listed for the Booker Prize, which she won for Offshore in 1979 (beating out V.S. Naipaul). It was an amazing career, and Lee has delved into Fitzgerald’s notebooks and letters to show how this distinctive writer created her unique fictions.