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When She Was Alive
What would her best book be, one wonders . . . perhaps MRS. DALLOWAY or A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN or BETWEEN THE ACTS or maybe, in a funny mood, THE WAVES.THE MOMENT must be pretty low down on anybody;s, wouldn;t you think?She didn't even mean for it to be a book, instead after she died Leonard Woolf just kept finding things and editing them up so that the Hogarth Press could keep churning out new volume after new volume of Virginia Woolf's.Well, i can understand that.And it's not necessarily the case that the very furst posthumous collection of essays, THE DEATH OF THE MOTH, had a higher percentage of hits than THE MOMENT, it's only that nearly everything in THE MOMENT feels a little soapy and watery, as though the suds had gone out of the dishwasher a long time ago.I was never crazy about Virginia Woolf's fascination with her own family.Maybe that appeals to some old school Bloomsbury fans, but a piece like "The Enchanted Organ: Anne Thackeray," is hard to read now with a straight face, and not only because of the double entendre, which I'm sure slyboots Virginia Woolf intended, of "The Enchanted Organ," but really because she's trying so hard to make us think that Anne Thackeray was indeed an important writer.

How about two different essays called, "Royalty."It isn;'t very helpful that the only way Leonard chose to distinguish them it to have a footnote appended to each, not when both footnotes say the exact same thing, "Written in 1939."Huh?Maybe I'll write an essay called, "Royalty," and add a footnote that says, "Written in 1939."That would serve me right, royalty too.It isn't that she, Woolf, was worshipful of royalty, although one recalls the godlike presence of the limo at the beginning of MRS. DALLOWAY, traversing the square slowly very much like the progress of a god's chariot, everyone standing around wondering and whispering who coukld be inside, which member of the royal family.

"On Being Ill" has attained classic status, and well deserved too, for it contains one of her most interesting discoveries, that illness has not its own literature and it should because it takes up so much space in our lives, particularly in the upper middle class.And yet the essay sort of peters out, as though she'd had rhis apercu and yet couldn't deide how to develop it.You get the feeling she wants to describe and than analyze her own symptoms, but then she wants to universalize them as a metaphor for being alive, enlarge the context of Russell Square, and yet the essay itself winds up eulogizing the bygone members of the British aristocracy, who lived such big lives.It has zero to do with being ill and heaps to do with having status.She's great, but let us turn to another book by her, one she wanted to have printed. ... Read more

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Virginia Woolf at its best
If one likes Virginia Woolf writing this is just more of the same. Witty, intimate, profound... malicious at times, she is not nice, she is not tender,but why should she be? this is her diary so she is just honest with herself... she is hard, depressed, happy, interested, amused (and amusing)... Great read ... Read more

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Virginia Woolf's exuberant 'biography' tells the story of the cross-dressing, sex-changing Orlando who begins life as a young noble in the sixteenth century and moves through numerous historical and geographical worlds to finish as a modern woman writer in the 1920s. The book is in part a happy tribute to the 'life' that her love for Vita Sackville-West had breathed into Virginia Woolf's own day-to-day existence; it is also Woolf's light-hearted and light-handed teasing out of the assumptions that lie behind the normal conventions for writing about a fictional or historical life. In this novel, Virginia Woolf plays loose and fast: Orlando uncovers a literary and sexual revolution overnight. ... Read more

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I shall dream wild dreams
No lover in the world ever wrote a valentine more exquisite than Virginia Woolf's tribute to her lover Vita Sackville-West. That tribute was "Orlando: A Biography," a magical-realism tale about a perpetually youthful, charming hero/ine who traverses three centuries and both genders -- and Woolf's writing reaches a new peak as she explores the hauntingly sensuous world of Orlando.

Orlando was born a young aristocratic man in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and when the dying monarch visited his home she became his new court favorite (and briefly lover). His passionate, curious personality attracted many other women over the years -- until he fell in love with Sasha, a mercurial but faithless Russian princess (supposedly based on Sackville-West's ex-girlfriend). Bereft of true love, he devoted himself to poetry and entertainment.

But then he's assigned to be an ambassador to Constantinople, and something strange happens -- while a bloody revolution rages, he sleeps for a full week... and wakes newly metamorphosed into a woman. With the same mind and soul but a female body, Orlando sets out on a new life -- and discovers that women aren't quite as different from men as she once thought.

"Orlando: A Biography" is a very weird book, and was even more so when it was written since "magical realism" didn't exist as a literary style in 1928. Virginia Woolf makes no explanations about Orlando's immortality or unexpected gender switch. It's simply accepted that once he was a man, and then she became a woman, and that s/he has lived from the Elizabethan era until at least the 1920s (and who knows, maybe Orlando still wanders among us?).

And Woolf's writing is at its peak here. Her prose is soaked in luxurious descriptions that constantly tease the senses -- silver and gold, frozen flowers, crystalline ice, starlight and the exquisite expanses of nature's beauty. At times the sensual writing seems almost feverish, and Woolf adds an almost mythic quality by inserting spirits of feminine virtues (Modesty, Purity and Chastity appear to try to hide Orlando's feminine body), and by having her hero/ine encounter great poets, queens and men of the sea.

And Orlando him/herself is a truly fascinating character -- s/he can be sweet, passionate, romantic, wild and melancholy, and s/he has an almost magnetic charisma. He starts off the story as an elusive romantic teenager, suffers a heartbreak that matures him as an artist, and post-metamorphosis she becomes a woman of the modern world. Both in mind and body, Orlando is a very different woman at the end than the boy s/he began as.

"Orlando: A Biography" is a truly spellbinding book -- Virginia Woolf's prose enthralls the senses while her main character explores the boundaries of gender. A must-read, for everyone. ... Read more

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An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn by her husband from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, others that are clearly writing exercises; accounts of people and scenes relevant to the raw material of her work; and comments on books she was reading. Edited and with a Preface by Leonard Woolf; Indices.
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A real treat
After coming across of a mention of Virginia Woolf in another book. I decided to check out some of her writing at the local library. I came across this book and picked it up. I had heard of Virginia Woolf, but had never read any of other writing. I feel like I have much in common with Ms. Woolf. I too, have the heart of a writer. I know well what she means when she talks about books that scream to be written. I also enjoyed reading critiques of books that I've also read. I also found itfascinating to read about how she came with the idea for each of her books and the process of writing each one.

The fact that Ms. Woolf was bipolar is also clear in this book. There are times when she is almost frenzied with energy and passion, and other times, when she is so down in the dumps she can barely function. Even though, I am not bipolar, I know what a struggle it can be to live with depression and how much of an impact it can have on your writing and your ability to concentrate and write. That is something I struggle with myself.

I found this book to be a very enjoyable read. I definitely plan on checking to see if I can locate more of her books at the library.

Not For Writers Only - But For Female Survivors
This is one of the greatest books ever compiled/edited (here, by the brilliant Leonard Woolf-too often completely disregarded for his own unique editorial genius) after Virginia Woolf's most tragic suicide. What you will learn from this book is the spectacularly heroic efforts VW expended moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, month to month, year to year, and decade to decade to prevail over those inner demons by utilizing her great gift of writing herself out. This is an extraordinary Masterpiece in English Literature as well. A must-have for anyone with even a scintilla of understanding about Bi-Polar Illness and Depression insofar as how torturously difficult it can be to simply carry on...let alone glitter like the Heavenly star VW surely was. Oh - and as long as her books are still in print, I don't see her as really "gone" at all.

An introduction to her mind and process
A WRITER'S DIARY: BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Edited by Leonard Woolf was in a tradition I love, the practical and inspirational inner life of writers recorded in diaries or letters. Within pages of starting it, I was already back to regular journal writing myself. This volume includes entries from Monday, August 4, 1918, to Sunday, March 8, 1941, within four days of her suicide by drowning.

The real value of this book, I think, which was heavily edited by her husband to protect people still living, I'm told, is that it clearly spells out the troubles and mental burdens of the writer that she was. I loved reading about her processes in writing books of hers that I have read, ORLANDO, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, MRS. DALLOWAY. (I forgot the affection I held for Mrs. Dalloway until I read about her writing it, and I just felt love for that book all over again.)

One can see the practical issues a writer faces, and I think this book performs the valuable service of illustrating that creative work is WORK, that it doesn't just rise from a magical well of talent and become complete -- voila! -- in the world. She frets about sales, about timing, about editing, about what her friends, Lytton Strachey, Morgan (E.M. Forster) and Tom (T.S. Eliot) will say. What the reviewers will understand of what she was trying to do, what her method should be, etc. It's a vivid account of the pain of creation. And she reminds herself each time a book comes out that she goes through these stages of happiness, dejection and waiting every time she publishes. When her book THREE GUINEAS came out, referring to the media response, she wrote from her home in the countryside, "It's true I have a sense of quiet and relief. But no wish to read reviews, or hear opinions... Mercifully we have 50 miles of felt between ourselves and the din."

She also notes how the slightest criticism is so much more resounding to her that the highest praise (we've all been there!), revealing explicitly that common trait of depressives, that their successes are somehow a sham perpetrated on the world by a cunning and knowing secret failure of a self.

An interesting angle of this book is her experiences in World War II with the bombing of London by the Nazis. She and her husband, Leonard, lost two homes they had in London, and she sometimes wondered if she would die that day in a raid, even forcing herself to write how she imagined dying by bombing would feel. It made me think of de Beauvoir's autobiography, how it was most gripping when she wrote of her life in France during WWII and the Vichy government. I think, particularly in this area, Woolf's unexpergated diaries, which were published later, would prove even more vital and interesting.

She also writes about what she is reading. Woolf was an accomplished critic, and she clearly like to write, to express herself in that way, whether for publication, or for catharsis as an "external processer" in her diaries, and her notes on what soothes her and what is boring for her (some chapters of ULYSSES) and what she ought to be reading if she's about to get killed in an air raid (SHAKESPEARE) are fascinating.

This book is VERY episodic, and while it's a little harder to pick up again, because of the lack of a conventional plot of ongoing issues, it's easy to keep reading for pages and pages once one does pick it up again. There is no plot really apparent here about her mental illness. Her suicide isn't something the reader of this volume sees coming, though she is often ill with headaches and later on, influenza, and as the war continues, she is thinking about the concrete matters of death.

Her lovely writing, colloquial, chatty, insightful and carefully plotting her worries and happinesses is a joy. Her last entry is about finding occupation to keep oneself going and motivated. She is even scheming what she could do with her time, and is grateful to have supper to cook, now that the cook has left the household to be with her sister during the raids. It's very vibrant and lively. It's hard to believe she isn't out there somewhere still making her charming and insightful notes in her journals.

This is a good book for people curious about the process of writing or about the thoughts of Woolf as she composed her books specifically. I would recommend it to them. ... Read more

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Virginia Woolf's writing has generated passion and controversy for the best part of a century. Her novels - challenging, moving, and always deeply intelligent - remain as popular with readers as they are with students and academics. The highly successful Cambridge Companion has been fully revised to take account of new departures in scholarship since it first appeared. The second edition includes new chapters on race, nation and empire, sexuality, aesthetics, visual culture and the public sphere. The remaining chapters, as well as the guide to further reading, have all been fully updated. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf remains the first port of call for students new to Woolf's work, with its informative, readable style, chronology and authoritative information about secondary sources. ... Read more

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'I am making up "To the Lighthouse" - the sea is to be heard all through it' Inspired by the lost bliss of her childhood summers in Cornwall, Virginia Woolf produced one of the masterworks of English literature in To the Lighthouse. It concerns the Ramsay family and their summer guests on the Isle of Skye before and after the First World War. As children play and adults paint, talk, muse and explore, relationships shift and mutate. A captivating fusion of elegy, autobiography, socio-political critique and visionary thrust, it is the most accomplished of all Woolf's novels.On completing it, she thought she had exorcised the ghosts of her imposing parents, but she had also brought form to a book every bit as vivid and intense as the work of Lily Briscoe, the indomitable artist at the centre of the novel. ... Read more

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Excellent
There's one point in the novel in which one of the characters reflects on the form of perceiving others. Looking at people from a distance, she thinks that this way of identifying and following others through their outlines is one workable approach. It can be taken, as I believe it's meant to be, as an analogy for the whole form of the book. In a way it's a book of intensely realized, complex, three dimensional characters each of whom encounters the other as if the outsider were a two dimensional sketch, lacking real substance. More than direct conflict, this aspect of the perception renders a deep insubstantiality in the social ties that people build, and the deep distance that they build more effectively. The isolation doesn't emerge just from self-absorption, rather it's a sense of lacking the language or real community for authentic relation. In this amazingly writen account that manifests not in the major dramatic disconnect we might expect but in quiet, subdued points of systemic, often unnoticed, rupture.

It's a beautiful, heartfelt and deeply sophisticated novel. Says a lot about class, gender, family and the way such conditions shifted into the first world war, all in under two hundred pages. Deservedly classic, and indicates that Woolf applied a comparable level of talent to her fiction as to her essays.

"She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think;to be silent; to be alone."
In what many call her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf creates a warm and intimateportrait of a family which resembles her own-her parents, brothers and sisters-and the friends with whom they enjoy their summer vacation on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides.Mrs. Ramsay, the mother of eight children, is the linchpin of the fictional family.She adores her husband, and though she often feels she fails him, she persists in smoothing his way so that he can work, managing the house and children, and inviting large groups of his students and friends to visit.Often strict and always right, Mr. Ramsay loves being the center of praise, but rarely praises others, and is often insensitive to the hopes and dreams of his children.

In Part I, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, their children, several women and men (including philosophy students), for whom Mrs. Ramsay enjoys acting as a matchmaker, all contribute their thoughts as Virginia Woolf explores some of her favorite themes during the course of one day on the island.Mrs. Ramsay's running commentary on her everyday life emphasizes her vision of the role of women and opens the question of whether or not it is possible for women to find a meaningful role in life outside of marriage.The importance of the thinking life-with peripheral attention paid also to the artistically creative life-reflects the intellectual climate of England in the lead-up to the First World War, and the desire of many thinkers to create a significant intellectual legacy which will survive them.

Part II, a brief bridge, ten years later, focuses on the changes which have taken place.The war has begun and ended.Many key characters have died, and Mr. Ramsay, devastated, also fears that all his writing will have been for naught.In Part Three, what's left of the family returns to the house on Skye for a visit after a ten year absence.Perhaps showing his personal growth and desire to atone for his previous insensitivity to James's desires, Mr. Ramsay now insists on making the trip to the lighthouse with teenagers James and his younger sister Cam, though James is no longer even interested in going. James commands the boat, however, and receives unaccustomed praise.Back on land, Lily Briscoe, a young woman artist for whom Mrs. Ramsay was hoping to be a matchmaker, decides to begin work again on an unfinished portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, and as she works, she also realizes a new kind of freedom for herself.

Taking a modernist approach, Woolf has no primary narrator, instead slipping in and out of the minds of several characters as they think about life and observe life around them.Her modified stream-of-consciousness allows her to create a vibrant, free-flowing atmosphere which she peoples with unique characters who have revealed their innermost thoughts.The overall effect is powerful, and Woolf's often lyrical prose conveys the sights and sounds of life on the island at the same time that it also enlivens the highly philosophical but very personal portrait of family life.No unifying plot and no unifying voice tie the three sections of the novel together, and many of the early characters play little role in the ending, yet in her hands the novel "works." Woolf captures not only the passage of time but also the effects of time on all of her characters as they continue their lives, however changed, following in the footsteps of experimental writers like James Joyce, and taking literary chances which place her work with the best of the twentieth century. Mary Whipple

Orlando: A Biography

Simply Brilliant - A Must Read
Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) was a well known writer, critic, feminist, and publisher. This was her fifth novel.

As background information, I read her first novel "The Voyage Out" published in 1915, skipped her second novel - which is considered to be a flop, Night and Day from 1919 - and then read "Jacob's Room," her third, then went on and read "Mrs. Dalloway," her fourth, and next read "To The Lighthouse," etc. Also, I read some of Woolf's non-fiction.

"The Voyage Out" is simple and straightforward work and it might remind the reader of a Jane Austen novel, but it set on a ship and then at a remote location. It is over 400 pages long, and has an Austen theme. After her second novel - which did not do very well - Woolf decided to be more risky and creative with the next book. She changed her style and approach to the novel and Woolf uses the stream of consciousness technique to bring a sense of the chaos and shortness of a young man's life around the time of World War I, Jacob's life, i.e.: from the pandemonium of Jacob's life as portrayed by Woolf through the use of the stream of the consciousness technique, we eventually have clarity in the novel. She carries this writing style on into the similarly chaotic story in the novel "Mrs. Dalloway."

This is her third novel using her stream of consciousness technique and she does it in a very dramatic fashion. The story is centered on the life of Mrs. Ramsay, a beautiful woman in her early fifties, and her older husband, and their eight children, plus other guests and neighbors and domestic help all at a beach house somewhere in Scotland on a warm summer day. Her husband is an academic and a bit remote. Mrs. Ramsay is more down to earth and mostly loved and admired by all.

As in the novel "Jacob's Room" the reader is left dangling as Woolf moves from character to character, giving the reader glimpses of their inner emotions. It is hard to determine what Woolf is doing and where she is going. But what she seems to be doing is celebrating a moment in a life. This is done very effectively with the stream of consciousness technique, and very dramatically as the story proceeds. The prose is brilliant and awe inspiring in some spots, and we see the genius of Woolf.

To say a lot more would ruin the story for the reader, but most will appreciate the way the story unfolds, and it unfolds very dramatically after a seemingly slow and complex start. The change has an effect on the reader - or so I found. Some think that it is Woolf's finest work and it would be hard to find fault with that assessment. She takes her ideas from "Jacob's Room" and applies them to a more complicated and dramatic setting at a family get together at a beach house, and it works.

This is a must read novel.
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This study offers an original approach to modernist visual aesthetics, drawing on a range of photographic and visual theory, psychoanalytic theories of the visual and modernist criticism as well as on original archive research. The book covers the domestic photography of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, the cinema writing of Colette, HD, Dorothy Richardson, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Bryher and the role of the visual in Virginia Woolf's "image/text" "Three Guineas". Throughout, there is a concern with women's ways of looking and a critical exploration of how gendered subjectivities are visually constructed. The modernist women considered in the book owned "vest-pocket Kodaks" and were prolific photographers. The book focuses in particular on the photographic practices of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell and explores the photo albums compiled by them. It includes many rare and fascinating images discovered among the archive collections of their photographs which have never been published before. The text shows the ways in which an evaluation of the visual is crucial to rethinking modernist aesthetics.It examines a freer range of aesthetics which modernist women explored in domestic and cinema arts and asks what such an exploration tells us about gender and modernism. ... Read more

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For students of modern literature, the works of Virginia Woolf are essential reading. In her novels, short stories, essays, polemical pamphlets and in her private letters she explored, questioned and refashioned everything about modern life: cinema, sexuality, shopping, education, feminism, politics and war. Her elegant and startlingly original sentences became a model of modernist prose. This is a clear and informative introduction to Woolf's life, works, and cultural and critical contexts, explaining the importance of the Bloomsbury group in the development of her work. It covers the major works in detail, including To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, The Waves and the key short stories. As well as providing students with the essential information needed to study Woolf, Jane Goldman suggests further reading to allow students to find their way through the most important critical works. All students of Woolf will find this a useful and illuminating overview of the field. ... Read more

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Perfect place to start
Whether you are starting to read Virginia Woolf for the first time or have read and enjoyed her books in the past and want a resource to turn to that will quickly and reliably fill you in on the basics of her biography, her social and cultural background, her fiction, and her contributions to literary criticism, Goldman's introduction is the book for you. She doesn't talk down to beginners, but writes about Woolf in an accessible style while doing a good job of focusing on the important issues. I was especially pleased by the dignitiy she grants her subject. While some biographers have voyeuristically focused on Woolf's childhood sexual abuse, madness, and suicide attempts, Goldman reminds us of the incredible depth and range of Woolf's contributions and of the context in which Woolf took her own life (both that of World War II and of Woolf's fear that she was succombing to another period of madness). Woolf's output was phenomenal: 10 novels (most technically innovative, all worth reading); one drama; a biography of art critic Roger Fry; two important and engaging works of feminist theory (A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN and THREE GUINEAS); and countless essays and short stories. Add to these the volumes of letters and diaries that have been published since her death, and you have a glimpse of what an extremely intelligent, talented, and dedicated person can accomplish in a short life of 59 years. Consider that this was all accomplished under less-than-desirable circumstances, and your awe will muliply ten-fold.

Goldman divides her book into four sections: (1) [Woolf's] Life; (2) Contexts; (3) Works; and (4) Critical Reception. Add to this an index and a brief "Guide to Further Reading" listing carefully selected works by and about Woolf and you have a very helpful 157-page resource. Although all four sections are rewarding, I found section 4 (Critical Reception) especially helpful because it shows how scholars' understanding of Woolf has evolved over the past 60+ years. Knowing when critics wrote reveals a lot about which issues concerned them most and, conversely, which ones they were blind to. (For instance, early critics were universally oblivious to the anti-Empire and anti-colonialism themes in Woolf's writing.)

A heads-up to hasty shoppers: This Introdution by Goldman should not be confused with THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO VIRGINIA WOOLF, a collection of essays by a number of the foremost Woolf scholars and edited by Sue Roe and Susan Sellers (2000), nor should Goldman's book be considered the "lite" or "dummies" version of the "Companion." Both volumes are worth owning, though for different reasons. ... Read more

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Lover of V. Woolf
This is a great book. I enjoy the way that Ms Woolf puts words together. It is like poetry.

A Perfect Novella and a Fun Read
Woolf has 16 major works and I think this is one of her funnier works. It would be a good place to start reading Woolf's works.

Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) was a well known writer, critic, feminist, and publisher. As background information, I read most of her work starting with her first novel "The Voyage Out" published in 1915, skipped her second novel - which is considered to be a flop, Night and Day from 1919 - and then read "Jacob's Room," her third, then went on and read "Mrs. Dalloway," her fourth, and next read "To The Lighthouse," etc. Also, I read some of Woolf's non-fiction and put together a Listmania list on Virginia Woolf.

What is her best work? That is a hard question to answer, but overall one I think her novel "To The Lighthouse" is a masterpiece. Her best non-fiction is "A Room of One's Own." I like the Oxford version of the latter published along with "Three Guineas."

But, the present novel or novella is fascinating and a fun way to get to know Woolf. Books to do not have to be long to be a great story or novel, and I point to Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilych" as an example. Is the present book equal to that? Of, course not but the present work is very entertaining. It is a fun read which takes about two hours. Most will be impressed and appreciate Woolf's writing ability.

It is a first person fictional narrative by a dog called Flush, a real dog that was owned by Elizabeth Barrett-Robert Browning. The real dog was stolen three times, but in the novella it is compressed into a story of one theft.

Woolf opens the novel sounding as if the book is non-fiction. After a few pages, it slips into the narrative form with the dog describing his life. She explores the dog's relation to the owner, and tells us what it is like to be a dog. The dog is very sensitive to the moods of the owner, and it is protective and becomes jealous on various occasions. One might say that Woolf gives the dog a soul. Does it all have a deeper meaning? Yes, it tells us about loyalty and love.

This is a fun read.

Good dog, great master
A good friend and I have an ongoing discussion about the anthropomorphization of animals in literature. He's agin' it. I'm not.

The beauty of FLUSH is that Woolf extends her technique of anthropomorphization to the humans. She figures out how to put you inside a dog's mind and desires and habits. Then she uses the same techniques on the humans. And while she is not unkind to any of these characters, she's not lenient toward any of them either.

That's the problem with most anthropomorphization. (Egad, do I have to type that word again?) It skins some poor animal to dress up a fictionally perfect human. Bad anthropomorphization (sigh) symbolizes a flat fraction of our human nature and represents it as the whole thing, or the most desirable part. This cheapens the human and disposes of the animal.

I love Woolf. She never cheapens anyone. She never makes cartoons of people (or of dogs). Read her if you're tired of shallow media portraits or snap judgments at the office water cooler. You know the kind. Comments on character that may be superficially correct, and you can't quite put your finger on it, but you feel the judgment's not fair at all... Woolf never does that to you.

Woolf observes her people (and her canine), lets you understand their most subtle good and bad impulses. With Woolf, we don't have to choose between knowing and loving another person. We can do both.

And we can love Flush, not as the idealized human, but as one actually does love a dog. Woolf has given us Flush - not a fantasy human in fake dog form - but a real dog, in print, a trusted and familiar companion. We feel his fur; we know where Flush is by the bed, in the dark; we know his eyes and their expression, and although Woolf tells us what Flush thinks, as with a real dog, there is something hidden, unhuman.

And then she goes and does the same thing with the PEOPLE. Brilliant.

So hang the critics, Virginia. This book may have been only a practice session for you, and a nuisance one at that, but we learn something about love and respect reading it. Now, can you think such a book unimportant?

Puppy Love
I really enjoyed this book. I have read a lot of Woolfs work. This little book is easily equal to her more critically acclaimed works like 'To the Lighthouse'. This story allows Woolf to be more playful than in any of the other piece she has done. The mix of fiction/ biography allows her to tell a story filled with heroes and villians that makes the book like an adult fairy tale. By the end I was fully engaged and completely consumed by Flush and his Life. This is a must for any fan of Woolf or anyone who has a love for animals.

More than just Woolf being cute
FLUSH probably gets the least respect of all of Virginia Woolf's books, and many critics at the time of its publication in 1933 (and since) thought she was being more than a bit twee in telling the satory of the Elizabeth Barrett-Robert Browning courtship from the point of view of Barrett's adored cocker spaniel. But this experiment in biography is much more than that: it's an attempt to understand the world from a non-human point of view, and it also is Woolf's most overt look in her fiction at class difference and (more unusually) at the world of crime. It's also a terrific addition to Woolf's extended engagement from an early 20th-c. perspective with the world of genteel Victorian society and its snobberies and hypocrisies. ... Read more

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A fine distillation of Woolf's diary
Virginia Woolf's diaries contain much of her most accessible and interesting writing, but the average reader is not likely to wade through all five volumes of the complete diary.This book, edited by the editor ofthe full diary, Anne Olivier Bell, presents most of the best of Woolf'sreflections on her daily life and times, the people she knew, the strugglesand joys of her days.Each year is prefaced with a helpful biographicalsketch, and the index of names gives not only page references, but a quickdescription of the person's connection to Woolf.

It's important to know,however, that the book was meant as a sort of companion to the previousselection from Woolf's diaries created by her husband, Leonard, andpublished as A Writer's Diary.This earlier book printed the diary entriesconcerning Woolf's writings, and it is a marvelous selection.However, itwas published at a time when many of the people Woolf mentioned were stillalive, and so it wasn't until the full diary was published that readers gotto see how dangerously witty and sharp Woolf could be about her colleaguesand compatriots.A Moment's Liberty benefits from being able to draw fromthe full diary without need of censorship. ... Read more

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Known for her novels, and for the dubious fame of being a doyenne of the 'Bloomsbury Set', in her time Virginia Woolf was highly respected as a major essayist and critic with a special interest and commitment to contemporary literature, and women's writing in particular. This spectacular collection of essays and other writings does justice to those efforts, offering unique appraisals of Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, the Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy Richardson, Charlotte Bronte, and Katherine Mansfield, amongst many others. Gathered too, and using previously unpublished (sometimes even unsigned) journal extracts, are what will now become timeless commentaries on 'Women and Fiction', 'Professions for Women' and 'The Intellectual Status of Women'. More than half a century after the publication of A Room Of One's Own, distinguished scholar Michele Barrett cohesively brings together work which, throughout the years, has been scattered throughout many texts and many volumes. . . affording these very valuable writings the collective distinction they deserve at last.
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Customer Reviews (2)

The woolf at the door
Wow, I'm really surprised that there aren't more reviews of this wonderful book.

"A Room of One's Own" was the first book that turned me onto Virginia Woolf (and I highly recommend that book, too).

However, I love "Women and Writing" for a wholly different reason. It's in this book that Woolf's essay on "the angel in the house" is included.

Are you a woman who's dreamt of becoming a writer? Go no further until you read Woolf's comments about the angel in the house. That phrase came from a Victorian-era poem by 19th Century poet Coventry Patmore. It's a sugary-sweet (and quite sickening) poem about the self-effacing woman who gives her whole being to her husband; so much so that there's nothing left of her own soul. Ick.

Woolf writes, "It was she [the angel in the house] who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her...She was intensely sympathetic. She was utterly unselfish. She sacrificed herself daily...The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. I took my pen in my hand...she slipped behind me and whispered [to me], 'My dear, you are a young woman...Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.'

"And she made as if to guide my pen...

"I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her... Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing..."

Powerful stuff.

I'm a full time writer who doesn't think too highly of wanna-be writers who spend all their time learning to write and reading about writing and thinking about writing.

However, if you're only going to read a handful of books about the craft, I recommend "A Room of One's Own" and this book, "Women and Writing."

Rose
author, The Houses That Sears Built

Expanding one's view of Virginia Woolf
Barrett brought together several of Woolf's writings and criticisms about women and writing. It's a fascinating collection that expands one's view of Virginia Woolf as a writer and as a thinking, highly intelligent woman. Her reviews of some of her contemporaries or such writers as Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontës are thought-provoking and revealing about Woolf's inner life. Coupled with Barrett's insightful introduction, this book is a welcome addition to anyone's Woolf collection or to those interested in women as writers. It expands a bit on the notions presented in her famous "A Room Of One's Own". ... Read more

Product Description
Nonfiction pieces dating from 1904, when she was twenty-three, to 1912, the year of her marriage to Leonard Woolf. "These are polished works of literary journalism-shrewd, deft, inquisitive, graceful, and often sparkling" (Library Journal). Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew McNeillie; Index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Reading reviews
Reading a book of reviews is an odd experience. Many of the works reviewed here were then contemporary novels and biographies which have since faded from popular knowledge. One is more interested in what Virginia Woolf had to say about these books than the books themselves.

Admittedly, Woolf's writing style was more straight-forward journalistic than the ingenious panache of later years. However, scattered here and there were gems of literary flair which showcased the writer's maturing voice. As a glimpse of Virginia Woolf before her fame, this is a worthwhile collection. ... Read more

Product Description
By drawing together strands in their subjects' family relations and environment, the authors provide fresh insight into the lives of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. In the formative years of their childhood the two sisters spent every summer with their large family and numerous friends at Talland House in St Ives. In her Introduction Helen Dunmore writes: 'Marion Dell and Marion Whybrow reveal how powerfully the "vision" of both Woolf and Bell sprang from their early life in St Ives.' The Prologue gives a portrait of this fishing town and artists' colony, 'on the very toe nail of England', at the time of the Stephen family's visits, from the early 1880s. Then come chapters on life at Talland House; the sisters' remarkable parents, Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth Stephen; and Vanessa and Virginia themselves, and how they developed their writing and painting. We see the Stephens' St Ives household with its constant succession of notable visitors such as the writer Henry James. Later, Marion Whybrow shows us Vanessa learning to paint, until finally basing herself for a lifetime's work as with her family at Charleston in Sussex, the centre for the artists of the Bloomsbury Group. M ... Read more

Product Description
Virginia Woolf was one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. As the author of works including "Mrs Dalloway", "To the Lighthouse" and "A Room of One's Own", she is celebrated both as a Modernist and as a feminist icon. Her involvement in the lively and controversial Bloomsbury Group, which included the writer Lytton Strachey, the painters Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry and the economist Maynard Keynes, was a significant part of both her personal and creative lives. As a group they were witty, bold and original and their intellectual and artistic accomplishments have had a lasting impact. Popular fascination with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group is reflected in the success of the recent films "The Hours" and "Carrington". The "Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury" is a fascinating guide to these intriguing characters. It presents Woolf as a dynamic individual with a wide and fascinating circle of friends. The book explores Woolf's early life and family, the origins and activities of the Bloomsbury Group and Woolf's later career and those of her friends.It also includes sections on the Hogarth Press, Virginia Woolf and the Suffrage movement, the myths and reality of Virginia's death and the continuing presence of the Bloomsbury Group in popular culture. Packed with insight and information, and illustrated throughout, the companion is the ideal guide to Virginia Woolf and her contemporaries. ... Read more

Product Description
Woolf’s first and most popular volume of essays. This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as “Modern Fiction” and “The Modern Essay.” Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew McNeillie; Index.
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Customer Reviews (3)

A Must Read Gem
As background information, I read most of her work starting with her first novel "The Voyage Out" published in 1915, skipped her second novel - which is considered to be a flop, Night and Day from 1919 - and then read "Jacob's Room," her third, then went on and read "Mrs. Dalloway," her fourth, and next read "To The Lighthouse," etc. Also, I read much of Woolf's non-fiction and set up a Listmania list on amazon.com.

We are the "common readers," as Woolf describes us, we readers of her books. The present book is an informal summary of all literature from the Greeks to Joyce. It is not complete but it is bits and pieces that Woolf thinks are interesting. This is a medium length book about 200 pages long and available free on line at the Gutenberg project.I think her best fiction is "To The Lighthouse" - that is a masterpiece - and her best non-fiction is "A Room of One's Own." I like the Oxford version of the latter published along with "Three Guineas."Also, the present book is almost on par with "A Room of One's Own."

I got interested in Dostoevsky, and read most of his work, so I was interested to read what Woolf might say about him. These two comments from Woolf on Dostoevsky show you what you can expect from the "Common Reader." The two quotes below are from the section on Russian literature.

Comment #1: Her question: it was written in Russian, and is the sense lost in the translation to English?

"Doubtful as we frequently are whether either the French or the Americans, who have so much in common with us, can yet understand English literature, we must admit graver doubts whether, for all their enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literature. Debate might protract itself indefinitely as to what we mean by "understand"."

Comment #2: Dostoevsky focuses on the Russian soul.

"Indeed, it is the soul that is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in Chekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky; it is liable to violent diseases and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read The Brothers Karamazov or The Possessed a second time. The "soul" is alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of humour and no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection with the intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it seems, of submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture."

The "Common Reader" is only glimpses and fragments of literature but it has many interesting sections.

An uncommon writer and the common reader
In the opening essay in this book Woolf tells us she is writing for the common reader. The common reader is not the critic and not the scholar."He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole- a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing."
Woolf then goes on in the subsequent essays to write of Chaucer, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Montaigne, George Eliot, Defoe, Addison, 'Modern Fiction' 'The Lives of the Obscure' ' Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights' 'The Russian Point of View'.
She writes with a special kind of insight and artfulness. I especially liked her essay on Montaigne who she sees as one of the few writers who truly makes a portrait of himself, and writes truly of the whole of his experience.She sees him as one who knew not only how to communicate himself but to be himself, who defied convention and ceremony, and prizing contemplation and retirement made a book which was himself.
It can be said that Woolf in a way does the same with these reflections upon others which hold up a mirror to her own masterfully insightful sensibility.

Uncommonly Good Read
You start out wanting to like this author.She has a witty, humorous way with words, a reverence for the written word and a telling grasp of what distinguishes writers of various eras. Of Elizabethan dramatists, shewrites, "Theirs is the word coining genius, as if thought plunged intoa sea of words and came up dripping." She writes about Classical Greekdamatists as one who understands what separates them from all writers whofollow: "To understand him," she says of Aeschylus, "is isnecessary to take that dangerous leap through the air without the supportof words ... for words, when opposed to such a blast of meaning, must giveout, must be blown astray..." For her, the best writing, whether thatof a Greek or an Englishman, has a meaning that defies words, a meaningthat we percieve in the mind -- without words. Coming down the centuriesand pausing to consider Jane Austen, she captures the essential writer interms that encourage and enlarge: "Think away the surface animation,the likeness to life, and there remains, to provide a deeper pleasure, anexquisite discriminaiton of human values." Along with her interest inthe well known (she treats many more than the few mentioned here)she has ateasing regard for near greats and nobodies, whose seldom touched booksrest in near oblivion.Of the memoirs of one, Laetitia Pilkington, shewrites: "... the dust lies heavy on her tomb ... nobody has read hersince early in the last century when a reader ... left off in the middleand marked her place with a faded list of goods and groceries." Nor isit just to have a chuckle that she looks at such relative unknowns, but togive us a look at their pained and frequently bereft lives.LaetitiaPilkington was badly used by men in her life.Woolf has a compassion forsuch women. You begin by wanting to like this woman who claims it's thecommon reader who makes or breaks an author.As you read on, you findyourself happily taken in and smiling at her wit, humor and insight. ... Read more

Product Description
'The Germans were over this house last night and the night before that. Here they are again. It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet, which may at any moment sting you to death. It is a sound that interrupts cool and consecutive thinking about peace. Yet it is a sound - far more than prayers and anthems - that should compel one to think about peace. Unless we can think peace into existence we - not this one body in this one bed but millions of bodies yet to be born - will lie in the same darkness and hear the same death rattle overhead.' Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Astonishingly brilliant essays
This slim collection (roughly 100 pages) of ten essays by Virgina Woolf, published as part of the "Penguin Great Ideas" series may be the best book I've read this year. It's also one of the hardest to review. The explanation is straightforward - every time I try, the review just devolves into tired cliches ("shimmering prose", "scintillating wit", "a writer at the height of her powers", anyone?) or fills up with direct quotes from the work itself. Not just skimpy little quotelets either, but huge, copyright-infringing, chunks of text. Pagesfull. I want to share every genius-soaked paragraph with you, and once I start, I just can't stop.

So, how to proceed? Why not implement a little self-restraint by resorting to that tired old device of listing the individual essay titles (easy) and - for a selected few - giving a few brief comments on wherein I think their genius lies (hard).

Well, duh, the genius lies in Virginia, of course. It pains me to acknowledge that, until about 6 months ago, I had this image of VW that was pretty much completely at odds with her warmth, wit, and ability to write prose that sparkles and enchants. (I'm sorry - that sounds so ridiculously pretentiously critspeak, but it's bloody well true. I will try to avoid the words "limpid" and "limn" in this review, if that's any consolation). How could I have been so wrong - she's smart as a whip, she's funny, and writes as if taking dictation from on high. Boy, can this woman write. I really, really, really hope that you will beg, borrow, or steal this collection to experience it for yourself.

So what does she write about here?

1. Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid.
2. Street Haunting.
3. Oxford Street Tide.
4. Craftsmanship.
5. The Art of Biography.
6. How it Strikes a Contemporary.
7. Why?
8. The Patron and the Crocus.
9. Modern Fiction.
10. How Should One Read a Book?

Each of the 9 essays I've read so far has blown me away, either because it contains one or more flashes of pure insight, or because of the incomparable quality of the writing, and - in most cases - some combination of the two. In six pages, the title essay contains some of the sanest observations about war in anything I've read outside of Orwell. The second two essays capture the quotidian pleasures of walking the streets of London with a wit and perspicacity that leaves me slack-jawed in admiration. Essay #4, one of my favorites (together with the final essay, which is simply perfect) is a spellbinding discourse on the slippery charm of words. Essays 6, 8, and 9 contain some of the most cogent remarks about writing that I have ever read. #7 is a hilarious takedown of those who would write or lecture about literature.
But it's the final essay in this book that raises the whole collection to my top 5 books of all time list (there's going to be some ugly rearranging that will have to take place on my "top 20" shelf, and a difficult choice lies ahead).

"How Should One Read a Book?" is where my self-discipline breaks down. This is an essay that demands to be quoted from. In whole chunks. With difficulty, I will confine myself to three:

"The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. ... To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions - there we have none".

(In your face, Harold Bloom!)

"Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words".

"I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns ... the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy, as He sees us coming with our books under our arms: 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading'."

By the time the title essay of this collection was published, Virgina Woolf had already filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river Ouse. I find her suicide enormously saddening, particularly given the brilliance of these essays. Subsequent deaths, such as those of Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace, suggests that such brilliance comes at a price.

But the work lives on. You have to read these essays! They are astonishing, in the best possible way. ... Read more

Product Description
Virginia Woolf's intention to publish her short stories is carried out in this volume, posthumously collected by her husband, Leonard Woolf. Containing six of eight stories from Monday or Tuesday, seven that appeared in magazines, and five other stories, the book makes available Virginia Woolf's shorter works of fiction. Foreword by Leonard Woolf.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Uplifting!
A friend tried to explain what Virginia Wolfe is all about ("She ties it all together in the end.") by letting me read the first short story in this book. What a lovely, lovely story it is!I cannot say more withoutgiving it away, but I will only tell you that I re-read it several times tograb all of its nuances because she makes every word count.I thoroughlyenjoyed it! ... Read more

Product Description
Virginia Woolf was fifty-four on January 25, 1936, some three weeks after this final volume of her diary opens. Its last page was written four days before she drowned herself on March 28, 1941. Edited by Anne Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew McNeillie; Index; maps. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

A "backstage" view of Virginia Woolf
This was a very interesting look at the day to day life of Virginia Woolf. I really enjoyed the stories of the women who made Woolf's household work so she could write without having to stop to open a can of soup. It's a wonderful look at a certain level of British society and after all Woolf was of the upper class and she was used to having servants. I particularly enjoyed the story of the one woman who ended up working for Charles Laughton and his wife and endorsed a "cooker" or stove in an ad after she was let go by Woolf who found her just too much of a problem. This book helps put Virginia Woolf's feet on the ground and it was a very refreshing look. I have recommended this book to a good number of people. It's a wonderful bit of social and literary history.

Fascinating look at Victorian England
This book is a fascinating look at the lives of servants and those they worked for in the Victorian era and on, through the eyes of Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury crowd. I have read other books about Woolf, including Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Brontë by Maureen Adams, which I also found fascinating. And other books about life in Victorian England including The Victorian House by Judith Flanders, which I also recommend.

I don't know enough about Woolf to judge Alison Light's research skills, but I liked her writing style. I liked learning more about Woolf's life by seeing how she interacted with her servants.

I thought the last fifty pages were too detailed about what happened to each servant from the time Woolf died until each of them died. Ho-hum. I couldn't keep all those women straight, they felt interchangeable, which in itself is a statement on the servant issue.

Interesting perspective, materials poorly integrated
Interesting perspective, but the materials tend to be repetitive and have a "patched-together" feel. The scarcity of records on these servants may be the cause of it, the effect, though, is an ironic one. The "thinly" portrayed lives of the servants almost reinforce the snobbish views of their masters, Virginia Woolf in particular, that their lives are insignificant.
Several "slips" also demonstrate how the materials taken from various sources are not well integrated. For example, on p. 270, the author mentions a friend "Morgan Forster". This "Morgan Forster" is no other than E.M. Forster. The passage must be directly taken from Woolf's diary or letters. Morgan is always the way she addresses him but "Morgan Forster" would not mean anything to most readers. Same thing happens on p. 287, the "Tom Eliot" who goes to church is actually T.S. Eliot!It is inexcusable that the editors did not catch these.

Mrs. Woolf
For compulsive readers of Virginia Woolf.If you have been intrigued for years over the many references to Virginia`s "servant problem" in her diaries and letters, this is the book to read.

It throws new light on middle-class families in Victorian times, and right through WWI.Questions are answered, secrets are revealed, and there is a surprise at the end.

I liked it very much.

Mrs. Woolf and The Servants
Where has good research gone?
Seems it's gone to quoting old BBC radio productions and bits of diary without context.
Some new information but the interplay between Woolf and her servants is really rather scant. A lot of this book is filler.
Sue S. ... Read more

Product Description
During the period in which these essays were written, Woolf published Night and Day and Jacob's Room, contributed widely to British and American periodicals, and progressed from straight reviewing to more extended critical essays. "Excellently edited, the essays reconfirm [Woolf's] major importance as a twentieth-century writer" (Library Journal). Edited and with an Introduction by Andrew McNeillie; Index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

More essays byVirginia Woolf
This is the third of a (yet uncompleted) series of collections of Virginia Woolf's essays edited by Andrew McNeillie. Of the projected series of a total of six books of Woolf's essays only four have been published so far. When this great undertaking has finished, we will at last have at our disposal the first COMPLETEpublicationof all the essays and reviews of one of the best-read women in the western world. This series is of immense significance to Woolf scholars,students and lovers, of which they are increasingly many, not only because all her essays will be collected in a neat series but also, and more importantly, because in all the books of the series, including this volume, there are/will be non-fiction pieces by Woolf which are no longer available to the 'common reader' as they can only be found in the archives of the newspapers, journals and magazines that Woolf wrote for in her times. Till recently, apart from her well-known essays 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas', Woolf's talent and importance as a critic had not been fully appreciated. This volume, along the others in the series, is both one of the factors and the effects of the recent surge of interest in Woolf's critical art, and is an extremely valuable contribution in that it makes manifest the whole range of writing of a literary figure who excelled not just in fiction but was also an equallymasterful essay writer and polemical commentator and reviewer of modern times. ... Read more