The Crowded Dance of Modern Life

by Virginia Woolf

The linking theme of these essays is modernity, for Woolf was writing in a world radically separated from the old certainties by the catastrophe of World War I. Here she provides some responses to what she called "the crowded dance of modern life".

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Literature

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Reviews

[amyleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woolf's essays are so sharp and soft at the same time. So much here about vanishing moments, about new forms being birthed from cauldrons, about dancing through crowded streets, hauntings, windows and thresholds.

[Radhika · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing.

[Robert Muir · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing in this series of essays is first rate, but the scenes are across the Atlantic, are 75 to 90 old and in some cases are no longer in existence. This makes the book quaint, but hardly topical. Also, many of the writers and poets mentioned will already be familiar to avid readers making the accompanying reference notes unnecessary and even a waste of time. Nevertheless Woolf presents some interesting viewpoints on the perception of reality.

[Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essay I like most is of course, "How Should One Read a Book?"