Book Description
This "original, intuitive, and even exciting" (The New Yorker) portrait highlights the experiences that shaped Virginia Woolf's life and art—her childhood, her relationships with her father and sister, her marriage, and her descents into madness. Black-and-white photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

When A Masterpiece May Need An Advocate
This paperback-only book is a Masterpiece, and frankly one of the best books written about Virginia Woolf. Certainly, books abound about her - but they were not written by this author and insider with vast connections to both Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Also, aside from the substantive content, the book is truly a labor of love. I've never "advocated" for a book before but Virginia Woolf surely is still "with us" as one of the most masterful and popular authors of all time. If she cannot literally speak for herself (although her own writings do that exceedingly well), I believe it is our responsibility to go-tell-it-on-the-mountain when a gem-of-a-book about one of the greatest female-genius-writers is about to go down for the count. Oh, and the front cover photo of VW alone is worth almost as much as the book itself for VW was never again photographed with her guard down in quite this way. The book tells you why. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A passionate journey
Woolf's first novel "Melymbrosia" was completed in 1912, but wasn't published until 1915 under the title "The Voyage Out". Louise DeSalvo has pieced together this first manuscript to offer the public a glimpse into the early creative mind of Woolf. Following the same basic plot as "The Voyage Out" (a young woman's journey to sexual and emotional awakening), "Melymbrosia" is much more frank in its portrayal of politics and sexuality (including homosexuality). Another difference is the raw and unpolished feel that this early draft contains. DeSalvo chose to retain some of Woolf's errors in this version, and while this doesn't necessarily detract from the story, it does make the reader wonder about their inclusion. "Melymbrosia" is a fascinating and powerful look into Virginia Woolf's early writing and life that conveys the passions she felt for all aspects of life, which she felt she needed to mute to some degrees in order to gain acceptance. ... Read more

Book Description
By the time she was twenty-four, Virginia Woolf had suffered a series of devastating losses that later she would describe as "sledge-hammer blows," beginning with the death of her mother when she was thirteen years old and followed by those of her half-sister, father, and brother. Yet vulnerable as she was ("skinless" was her word) she began, through these years, to practice her art-and to discover how it could serve her. Ultimately, she came to feel that it was her "shock-receiving capacity" that had made her a writer.Astonishingly gifted from the start, Woolf learned to be attentive to the movements of her own mind. Through self-reflection she found a language for the ebb and flow of thought, fantasy, feeling, and memory, for the shifts of light and dark. And in her writing she preserved, recreated, and altered the dead, altering in the process her internal relationship with their "invisible presences." "I will go backwards & forwards" she remarked in her diary, a comment on both her imaginative and writerly practice.Following Woolf's lead, psychologist Katherine Dalsimer moves backward and forward between the work of Woolf's maturity and her early journals, letters, and unpublished juvenilia to illuminate the process by which Woolf became a writer. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory as well as on Woolf's life and work, and trusting Woolf's own self-observations, Dalsimer offers a compelling account of a young artist's voyage out-a voyage that Virginia Woolf began by looking inward and completed by looking back. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

See my review
of Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf.Lee's bio is probably the gold standard, but James King's biography of VW is a great follow-on.King was willing to write much more graphically about VW's sexual frustrations, flings, and no-holds-barred quotes of VW regarding the same. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Hard to pigeon-hole
this book as a biography or as a series of critical essays of Virginia Woolf's novels and other works.I lumped this book with the other three biographies of VW that I have read this past year (Quentin Bell's, Hermione Lee's, and James King's) but Julia Brigg's "biography" is actually quite different, and probably should stand alone, not be compared with the other three.Each of Briggs' fourteen chapters covers one specific work by VW.For example, chapter 4 is "Jacob's Room"; chapter 5 is "The Common Reader"; chapter 6 is "Mrs Dalloway"; and, chapter 13 is "Roger Fry."Briggs provides an exhaustive look and interpretation (sometimes, almost too exhaustive) of each of VW's works, and uses these works to explore VW's psyche.VW was intensely interested in psychoanalysis (as was Gertrude Stein) and one could argue that Briggs has used VW's works as a way to psychoanalyze her.Briggs is well qualified in this endeavor:for many years she was professor of Woolf studies at Hereford College, Oxford, and is currently the editor of the Penguin UK reprint series of Woolf's novels.

Don't Be Afraid of Virginia Woolf --Briggs bio is amazing...
Julie Briggs is an amazing author and biographer. She is an ENglish prof at DeMontfant University in Leicester, England. She was the general editor for the Penguin UK reprint series of Woolf's novels so knows Virginia's work very well...I think this knowledge of the work and the structure of the work makes this rather indepth analysis of the famous author's motivation for writing the novels, personal circumstances surrounding the writing, her marriage, her friendships and her ever-declining health and mental problems is what makes this book so fascinating...It's no ordinary bio-- it concentrates on the work and the impetus for the work. Reading this book is like being allowed inside the writer's head and her 'office' while and after she creates her many volumes. Don't I wish I had read this book in college-- it really makes you understand not only writer motivations but the implosion the world around makes on the writer and his/her works. Great for any Woolf fan or for use in teaching Woolf or for any writer or would-be writer. Fabulous for use in women's studies programs...and fascinating for anyone struggling with their own creativity or stifled dreams/goals.

Satisfying
Briggs biography of Virginia Woolf follows a form that makes perfect sense for a biography of a writer. That is, it is a "biography" of her books as much as it is a biography of Virginia Woolf herself.

Not a great deal of time is spent going into Woolf's pre-natal background and infant years. The text quickly gets to the task of looking at the formative influences of Woolf the writer, and the circumstances and stimuli that influenced the creation and formation of each of her books.

A chronological approach is followed. We begin with the first efforts of writing, the first novel, and proceed sequentially through each of her books. A full chapter is given to the period in which each book was written and published. Each chapter concludes with details on the actual book, including such items as the novel's original cover illustration (usually done by her artist sister Vanessa), the size of the print runs, the critics responses, and how the book fared over the years, even up into the 1990s. Honestly, I found information like this very interesting. For one, it was interesting to see how first print runs increased as Woolf gradually grew in popularity.

What I most like about Brigg's approach is that you come away with key insights that any appreciator of Woolf should cherish. One learns a great deal about the process that Woolf went through in creating her works as well as about the life of Woolf herself. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

The final word on Woolf's essays -- spectacular!
Without a doubt, the finest collection of essays on V.W.'s essays.The editors are to be commended.This is not for everyone, but for the true scholar, this is extremely fine work -- particularly the first half of the introduction. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Writer's Diary to Read.
I am learning a lot about writing by reading this book.I have peeked at it because I'm reading another book right now, but I have liked what I have read so far.

Revealing Genius
I have a feeling I wouldn't like Virginia Woolf if I met her, any more than I'd like any of her friends in the Bloomsbury Group, but I love her novels and her diary is a wonderful insight into the mind of someone who wrote novels of genius, especially Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse.I'd recommend this to anyone who wanted to get into her novels.

Into Virginia Woolf's world.
"The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One: 1915-1919" was truly magnificent.I never was so interested in every day, mundane goings-on as I was while reading this diary.As a journal keeper, I was in awe over the way she expressed her thoughts and explained her day(s).I've never read anything by her, but in reading this has really sparked my interest.Editor Oliver Bell put much time and hard work into this book, but I found the footnotes on the bottom of the pages bothersome, and it took me a while to get used to them being there.If you're interested in Virginia Woolf, then read her diary.I recommend.

Sublime writing
Woolf is fascinating, even when describing the most mundane details of daily life.Her writing style is as beautiful here as in her fiction, and so the diary is well worth reading for that alone.Plus, nearly every pagecontains a reference to Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, or some otherBloomsbury luminary.She isn't always completely truthful orstraightforward, but she is always supremely entertaining.However,despite a number of very helpful footnotes, the editor cannot provideexplanations and clarifications for every entry, so it helps to be somewhatfamiliar with Woolf's life before reading her diaries. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best work yet on Woolf's experience of War.
This is a watershed study by Dr. Levenback on Virginia Woolf's personal experience of World War I, and her transformation through her writingof the deep and lasting effects of The Great War on herself, thenon-combatants of Britain, and the rest of the 20th century.

Sustainedthroughout by original research and exceptional insight, this lucidlywritten book brings to life Woolf's personal and intellectual response toWWI. Additionally, Dr. Levenback presents Woolf's literary use of the warvia the characters in her novels in a stimulating and very enjoyablemanner.

If you read one book this year about Virginia Woolf and herwriting, this deserves to be the one. ... Read more

Book Description
Her revolutionary novels and essays have inspired generations of feminists, and her life has aroused both interest and speculation. In Virginia Woolf A-Z, the author's works and autobiographical writings are set in the context of her infamous social milieu. Eight "family" trees map out the complicated relationships and living arrangements of the Bloomsbury Group, and a chronology gives a quick overview of the major events of Woolf's life. With over 1,300 entries and fifty illustrations, this desktop companion is the ideal antidote to those afraid of Virginia Woolf, and valuable beyond measure to those already familiar with her work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A must!
This reference has all the "A-to-Z" entries one would expect but the critical analyses of every one of Woolf's novels makes this a must-have book for the new Woolf fan.

Excellent resource
This book supplemented a course I took on the works of Woolf.It is filled with interesting background material and helpful character biographies. Hussey skillfully condensed volumes of biographical andcritical work on Woolf into one, user-friendly manual. ... Read more

Book Description
From her girlhood in her father's library to the end of her life, Virginia Woolf read widely and with passion. Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader shows how Virginia Woolf's reading affected her feminism and how her feminism affected her opinions of her reading. This new work looks at the impact of that intense reading on Woolf's writing and on her feminism. Each chapter looks at an aspect of her thinking--her attitude towards the English nation, the imagination, the public sphere, and fame--through the lens of a literary period, from Ancient Greece through the Romantics. The epilogue explores Woolf's surprising legacy among contemporary African writers. ... Read more

Amazon.com
"Another book about Virginia Woolf?" you cry, and not entirely without cause. One may well wonder what remains to be said about Woolf after Hermione Lee's 1997 biography, but then, biography is as much about the prism through which the subject's life is viewed as it is about the subject. (Besides, if we stopped writing biographies of people after the publication of very good ones, Quentin Bell would have had the last word on Woolf back in 1972.) Mitchell Leaska, a professor of humanities at NYU, has devoted his academic career to the study of Woolf's writing, and while he uncovers no surprising new facts about her life, he weaves a masterful interpretation of those facts that shows, in part by quoting extensively from her own writings, how her life informed her work.

The main thrust of Leaska's version of Woolf's life is a medical and psychological one. If we accept the hypothesis that Woolf was afflicted with manic-depressive psychosis, and knowing as we do that this condition is not neurotic but a genetically transmitted affective disorder, Leaska asks, "Does this genetically transmitted disorder account for--indeed, 'explain'--Virginia Woolf's extraordinary powers as a novelist and essayist?" Well, as he immediately admits, "probably not," but it does help us to understand how certain events of her life (the deaths of loved ones, sexual molestation by her half-brothers, the marriage of her sister Vanessa to Clive Bell) may have functioned as "triggers" to her illness. Leaska is particularly strong in drawing out the implications of the loveless marriage between Woolf's parents, and the young woman's intense emotional attachments to other women, in clear prose that respects the psychological complexities of the situations without descending into psychobabble. Anyone who has read Woolf, or thinks they know about her life, will find in Granite and Rainbow a solidly attractive argument against which to test their own responses. --Ron HoganBook Description
In its shrewd probing for the wellsprings of the writer's creativity, Leaska's life can't be ignored.--Publishers Weekly ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Beyond the old ways of biographical indexing
This has to be the best biographical study of Virginia Woolf. It is in a new style of creative biography rather than the old forms of didactic dissertation that should be only part of Library indexing and not of biographical scholarship.Professor Leaska brings the reader into the life of this famous fiminist like no other previous attempt, including Mr. Bell and the family log. The parents, Leslie and Julia, become real and full of the complications of parenting with such a sensitive child as Virginia.Her sister Vanessa is now shown in a much fullerl characterization than anyone has tried before. Leaska has carefully and skillfully devided these individuals from the whole picture, and 'painted' each person in a many faceted, illuminated composition and finally brings them back together in a masterful mural of reality and experience. The setting of England and the continent play a particularly stimulating part in describing the physical conditions sourrounding Virginia throughout her life.There is 'climate' throughout this book.You have contact and feeling to Virginia and not just information.She was not allowed to go to college to learn the mechanisms for her passion of writing but wrote at home and learned her own way."A Room of Ones Own" is one of the leading declarations for women and their individual rights. Leaska presents her defiance in full force. Vita Sackville-West was one of Virginia's best friends and part of the gathering of people around this charismatic leader and activist.Vita is another study by Leaska of creative independance and enormous vitality that joined, at times with Virginia, to revel in their delight in knowing each other. The chapters of their friendship are often moving and reaffirm the value of what true friendship means. The book is a masterpiece.The style is new and directed.The characters in this drama/tragedy you will never forget. Virginia now becomes a sensual being away from her writing and then leading into her books.The New York Times reviewer Michael Anderson should be ashamed for his homophobic attitudes and some kind of revenge against Leaska or possibly Virgina herself.

A fascinating book mirrors a fascinating life
For anyone who is familiar with the life of Virginia Woolf, this book will offer few surprises. What it does offer, however, is an continously interesting slant on the life of one of the most talented, yet troubled women of the Twentieth Century.

Through Leaska's comprehensive biography, we learn the intimate details of her family life. Especially interesting in the first few chapters is the meticulous dissection of Virginia's mother, who served as the perpetual victim forever pining for her first husband. She revelled in her feminity and equated this with servitude toward those who were suffering or in distress.

Woolf is indeed a fascinating subject of study and Leaska's biography definitely does her complicated persona justice.

If this is your first foray in the world of Virginia Woolf, it would be beneficial to read some of her works including "To the Lighthouse" and "A Room of One's Own" first as these are often quoted and will only serv! e to complement this rich biography. ... Read more

Book Description
Thirty-five papers selected from the 1998 conference analyze and re-explore communities of which Virginia Woolf was a part -- for example, Female Modernists, artists, lesbian and gay, communities formed by letter writing, British, and pacifist. Highlights include artists' conversations (reproduced) on their communion with Woolf, discussion and critique of the film Paris Was a Woman, and thoughts on the conversations that take place while reading and teaching Woolf; Woolf and technology; the letters she received in response to Three Guineas; Woolf through the lens of trauma theory; and the impact of her work on Spanish-American women writers. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A study of Woolf is incomplete without her letters
Virginia Woolf is an author of myriad voices. The letters in Congenial Spirits are selections from Woolf's letters that provide insight to what Woolf thought and felt as she wrote. If you think that you know Woolf fromblurbs in anthologies or from her novels, I recommend that you spend sometime with her letters and her diaries. You will discover that Woolf is muchmore complex than the simplistic "stream of consciosness" monikeroften applied to her. ... Read more