Virginia Woolf

by James King

Exploring the relationship between Virginia Woolf's troubled life and her writing, a biography reveals her struggle with depression, use of writing to capture the joy of existence, and paradoxical focus on subjects she knew best--destruction, death, and fragility.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

699 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

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Reviews

[Tom Wijgert · Rating 4 out of 5]

King derives his information from an immense number of letters, books, and grocery lists, by doing so he sketches a marvellous image of Virginia Woolf in all her dark, womanly, cheerful, and depressed facets.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the Bloomsbury artists, though they did get around quite a bit by anyone's standards, not to mention the prevailing norms of fin-de-siecle England. I mean at the point at which you can look around a crowded room and half of the people present are either your current or past lovers, I should think there would certainly be some complications that would tend to interfere with the craft. "Bohemian" and "avant-garde" don't even begin to describe it. But if you admire Virginia Woolf as a writer and can get past some of the rather bizarre constructs of the Bloomsbury artists' relationships--which, after all, aren't really the point--then this book is worth a read, with one caveat: I think the author takes a somewhat unseemly pleasure in attempting to unearth--and in speculating (arguably unjustly) on the existence of--certain alleged skeletons in Woolf's and others' closets. Rather an out-of-bounds thing to do I think, cheap and sensationalistc.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

First American Edition