The Moment And Other Essays

by Virginia Woolf

A selection of twenty-nine essays. "[Woolf's] essays...are lighter and easier than her fiction, and they exude information and pleasure.... Everything she writes about novelists, like everything she writes about women, is fascinating.... Her well-stocked, academic, masculine mind is the ideal flint for the steel of her uncanny intuitions to strike on" (Cyril Connolly, New Yorker). Editorial Note by Leonard Woolf.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Classics

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

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

[Rashaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you haven't read Woolf's essays, you just haven't really breathed in exhilaration. She is pure breath and light. Reading her fills up your lungs, and makes you dizzy in love with her voice, her insight, and her humor. Woolf is a refuge to run to whenever writer's block threatens. She is a pinnacle that challenges and inspires. She is constantly at my side, pushing me to think harder, write better, and live wider.

Though some of the pieces in The Moment and Other Essays may fly over the head of contemporary readers, particularly the biographical tributes to lost names of people Woolf admired, or didn't, many of these essays are masterful works of art. Rather than try to summarize them, please taste for yourself:

From "The Art of Fiction":

That fiction is a lady who has somehow got herself into trouble is a thought that most often struck her admirers...For possibly, if fiction is, as we suggest, in difficulties, it may be because nobody grasps her firmly and defines her severely. She has no rules drawn up for her, very little thinking done on her behalf.

"American Fiction":

Women writers have to meet many of the same problems that beset American [writers:]. They too are the casualties of their own peculiarities as a sex; apt to suspect insolence, quick to avenge grievances, eager to shape an art of their own. In both cases, all kinds of consciousness--consciousness of self, of race, of sex, of civilization--which have nothing to do with art, have got between them and the paper, with results that are, on the surface, at least, unfortunate.

"The Leaning Tower":

A writer has to keep his eye upon a model that moves, that changes, upon an object that is not one object but innumerable objects. Two words alone cover all that a writer looks at--they are, human life...
..Nobody thinks it strange if you say that a painter has to be taught his art; or a musician, or an architect. Equally a writer has to be taught. For the art of writing is at least as difficult as the other arts. And though, perhaps because the education is indefinite, people ignore this education; if you look closely you will see that almost every writer who has practised his art successfully has been taught it.

"To Spain"

You who cross the Channel yearly, probably no longer see the house at Dieppe, no longer feel, as the train moves slowly down the street, one civilisation fall, another rise--from the ruin and chaos of British stucco this incredible pink and blue phoenix four stories high, with its flower pots, its balconies, its servant-girl leaning on the windowsill looking out.

Woolf's voice is authorial. Reading her, we can easily picture her at the lectern. Her voice bouncing off the tiles and reverberating in the hall outside. Yet she regularly steps down from the podium, wraps an arm around you, perhaps leading you for a stroll through the lush garden or the bustling street outside. Next you're commiserating in a quiet corner; tea cups rattling as she snickers and you stifle a laugh at her poking fun of Mr. So and So and Lady Such and Such. Then, in a flash, she'll swoop back up again to center stage, commanding full attention and taking us to task, knowing we can be better and create finer art.

Like any cherished favorite album or collection of poetry, The Moment and Other Essays serves as touchstone. Should a writer or reader need the comfort of a wise and intimate voice to prod him back into the Marvelous, Woolf is nothing less than that scintillating light.

[Joe Skilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Because she feels abundantly, because she rides after her emotion fearlessly and takes her fences without caring for falls.”

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 5 out of 5]

Вирджинии Вулф я не боюсь
В отличии от критика и ученого, читатель вечно стремится по наитию, неведомо из какого сора, сам для себя создать целую теорию писательского ремесла. Поглощенный чтением, он день за днем словно ткет полотно – пусть оно не очень ладно скроено, зато занятие это каждый раз доставляет ему минутную радость.
Я боялась Вирджинии Вулф. Смутно ощущала в ней фигуру немыслимого масштаба, одним своим существованием способную обнулить всякого, дерзнувшего выносить суждение о предмете ее интереса, не будучи ею. Занятно, что критические и литературоведческие работы, и философские труды, и разного рода ученые трактаты читаю без смущения. Чего-то не понимаю и признаю это; что-то другое понимаю частично и была бы не против, чтобы кто умный растолковал; с какими-то признанно авторитетными мнениями рискую не соглашаться. В ней интуитивно чувствовала колоссальную мощь, после столкновения с которой, картина мира уже не будет прежней. Такого рода потрясения всегда связаны с необходимостью выхода из зоны комфорта, существенной корректировки системы понятий и ценностей, чего обывателю никогда не хочется делать.

Предчувствия ее не обманули. Эссе Вулф на порядок превосходят не только мои попытки говорить о книгах, но экзерсисы всех известных мне людей, подвизавшихся на этом поприще. Никогда раньше я не ощущала такой бездонной пропасти между уровнем собственного умения выносить точное непредвзятое, опирающееся на многие параметры оценок суждение, и способностью к тому же у другого – даже у медийных фигур, даже у признанно великих. Нескромно, да ведь я и не скромна. Не в этом случае. То есть, практически во всех оценках с госпожой Вулф совпадала (там, где имею понятие о предметах ее суждения). Но она, говорящая о книгах, так немыслимо хороша как вольная птица в небесах, где прочие – летательные аппараты той или иной степени технической сложности, искусности исполнения, богатства материала. Признаюсь, не раз думала, читая: Куда уж после нее?

Однако небо большое и моему воздушному змею хватит места покувыркаться в потоках восходящего воздуха. Тем более, что сборник, посредством которого познакомилась с эссеистикой Вулф, называется «Обыкновенный читатель». Открывающий его текст «Пэстоны и Чосер», сразу задает планку читательских ожиданий этому немалого объема (под восемьсот страниц в пересчете на офсет) фолианту. Умный, интеллектуальный без снобизма, доброжелательный, исполненный нежности к героям и читателю тон. Рассказ о семействе Пэстонов, чей предок привез в родной Норфолк кусочек животворящего Креста Господня, да так и не удостоился, к негодованию окрестных кумушек, приличного надгробного камня от потомков. То, как менялось отношение к грамоте в этой семье на протяжении поколений. Что для славной матроны было способом рационального хозяйствования, письменных отчетов супругу и повелителю о проделанной работе, да инструментом ведения реестра движимого имущества, то подарит ее сыну радость встречи с «Кентерберийскими рассказами» Чосера. В них благородный сквайр станет сбегать от обыденности во всякую удобную (и особенно неудобную) минуту. А вот поди ж ты, вспоминаем мы сейчас этого мелкого помещика из середины XV века благодаря его страсти к Чосеру.

«О глухоте к греческому слову» - неожиданно актуальный для сегодняшней действительности русскоязычного читателя разговор о переводной литературе вообще и трудностях перевода. Вдумчивый, серьезный, обращающий внимание на подводные камни, на особенности переноса понятийных пластов, которые непременно нужно учитывать, если хочешь по-настоящему понимать; и ожидания, коим так и суждено остаться неисполненными в силу изначальной невозможности перенести что-либо без искажений. Но и об удивительной современности, несмотря ни на что, греческой трагедии.

«Елизаветинский сундук» о том, каким напротив, выспренным, высокопарным, далеким от жизни кажется драма елизаветинской эпохи, насколько смешна и неуклюжа сегодня тогдашняя неумеренная тяга к украшательству. «Елизаветинские пьесы», за Исключением Шекспира и, может быть, Бена Джонсона - как далек от возможности вызвать сопереживание весь массив елизаветинской драматургии с его бурями в стакане воды и реками крови. Автор постоянно сопоставляет несчастных елизаветинцев с Монтенем, творившим в ту пору во Франции и сравнение это сильно не к чести соотечественников. Что ж, всякая литература в период становления проходит пору неуклюжего ученичества.

Было бы неверно уделять краткому обзору каждой из статей хотя бы абзац, это заставило бы мой отзыв разрастись до непомерных пределов, не передав и сотой доли смысла, блеска, очарования оригинала. а в академической среде наверняка есть исследователи посвятившие работе над этим недели неустанных трудов. Потому дальше постараюсь суммировать основные самые яркие впечатления. Есть группа статей о фигурах, отчасти эксцентричных, способствовавших распространению просвещения, не будучи учеными, на унитарном уровне под общим заглавием "Силуэты" "Мисс Митфорд", "Доктор Бентли", "Леди Дороти Нэвил", "Архиепископ Томпсон". Обо всех этих персонажах Вулф говорит с глубокой нежностью, даже иронизируя, даже позволяя себе некоторый сарказм (д-р Бентли), все эти люди страшно далеки от русскоязычного читателя, что не делает их фигуры менее интересными.

С огромной любовью и уважением пишет Вирджиния Вулф о Джейн Остин, сестрах Бронте, Джордж Эллиот, а поскольку только книг последней я не знаю, что до остальных - они и моя большая любовь, то читать эссе, посвященные им, было подлинным наслаждением. Может быть поэтому они показались такими короткими. Занятной оказалась статья о Даниэле Дефо и его романе "Моль Фландерс", сочетание этих имени и фамилии когда-то краем уха даже слышала, но и предположить не могла, что это едва ли не первый английский феминистский роман, написанный автором "Робинзона".

Дивные размышления о поэтах стали бальзамом на мое сердце повернутого на английской поэзии синего чулка. Всякий, кому доводилось числить среди своих увлечений нечто, далеко выходящее за рамки стандартных интересов круга своего общения, знает сорт ментального голода, утоляемого лишь беседой на заданную тему с умным эрудированным собеседником. Она утолила мой голод: Джон Донн, Роберт Браунинг, Китс, Шелли, Йейтс - обо всех понемногу, но мне теперь надолго хватит. И совершенно чудесным подарком для меня, тем более прекрасным, что не��жиданным, стали несколько статей о русской литературе. Такого уровня погружения, такого знания предмета, такого упоительного соединения трезвой оценки критика и литературоведа с восторгом читателя и пытливым взглядом писателя, вглядывающегося в творческую мастерскую коллег, мне не приходилось встречать ни у Быкова, ни у (выговорю кощунственное) Набокова.

Толстой, Достоевский, Чехов, Тургенев, Брюсов, Аксаков, Горький. Она даже записки дочери Достоевского об отце прочла и отрецензировала. Я не для красного словца сказала об особой глубине, размышления Вулф о чеховской драматургии и о его крупной прозе (ни того, ни другого прежде не любила и не понимала, подарили мне новый взгляд на Антона Палыча, земной ей поклон за это. Завершает сборник горько-ироничная статья "Своя комната", которой мисс Вулф последовательно проводит политику наиболее близкого моему сердцу разумного рационального феминизма. В двух словах, неминуемо упрощая, ее содержание можно пересказать, как: всякой женщине, которая вздумала бы заниматься самостоятельным творчеством, нужно иметь собственную комнату и. пусть скромный, но независимый источник дохода. Без этого жестокий мужской мир сомнет ее и растопчет. Даже и сейчас, в наше просвещенное время. Что ж, рада констатировать, что времена изменились к лучшему. Значит то, что делала она, было не напрасно.

[Samuel Maina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Moment: Summer’s Night.
I have read this essay several times and it is a classic case of stream of consciousness. In a very short space, Virgina talks about the Sun, the Owl and the Lamp. So much for participants in a pageant.
I see allusion to so much stuff in so short a space – The darkness of the Owl, The future, seeking out the truth, consciousness, the self-confidence of the youth, melancholy.
The Faery Queen
Wow! Whenever Virginia writes about a Poet, it is like she gets into the mind of the Poet himself and goes through the passions of the poet himself. She writes with so much respect for Spencer, it makes me want to go look for all the Spencer writings that are out there. When compared to Tennyson, Spencer is called a perfect gentleman. You notice it is not Perfect Gentleman starting with the caps….
Spence displays a typical figure, making Tennyson’s pattern seem unintelligible; an easy butt for satire. I agree that reading poetry is a complex art, and the faculty employed when reading is sensual, the eye of the mind opens. While it is also true that the mind has different layers…The desire of the eye, the desire of the body, desires for rhythm, movement, the desire for adventure—each is gratified. And this gratification depends upon the poet’s own mobility.
The conventions used by Spencer are not enough to cut us off from inner meaning – allegory. For the most exact observer has to leave much of his people’s minds obscure. His poem, the abundance of an idle brain, true difficulty lies elsewhere. It lies in the fact that the poem is a meditation, not a dramatisation….living in a great bubble blown from the Poets brain.
I will definitely look for some Spencer.

Congreve’s Comedies.
I am immediately drawn to want to read The Way of the World through The Old Bachelor, The Double Dealer, and Love for Love. I seems Congreve was a melancholic man - no writer of his time and standing passed through the world more privately. In his own words, “Ease and quiet is what I hunt after, I feel very sensibly and silently for those whom I love?, that is all.”
Of course Virginia was drawn to this, seeing as she was a true melancholic as well. Very deep writing that is another level.
Congreve, the man of mystery, the man of superb genius who ceased to use his genius at his height, was also, as any reader may guess from almost any page, of the class of writers who are not so entirely submerged in their gift but that they can watch it curiously and to some extent guide it even when they are possessed by it. He opines - “the distance of the stage requires the figures represented to be something larger than the life” – I think the man was speaking about character.
In the art of writing plays we get very deep insights… Men and women were never so witty as he makes them; they never speak so aptly, so instantly, and with such a wealth of figure and imagery as he would have us believe
“… the distance of the stage requires the figures represented to be something larger than the
life” explained – I believe if a poet should steal a dialogue of any length, from the extempore discourse of the two wittiest men upon earth, he would find the scene but coldly received by the town?. People on the stage must be larger than life because they are further from us than in the book; and cleverer than life because if he set down their actual words we should be bored to distraction.
The stage names themselves - Tattles and the Foresights, the Wishforts and the Millamants, Vainlove, Fondlewife, Valentines, the Mirabells, and the Angelicas, food for thought.
The dramatist in action - There are no preliminaries, no introductions; the curtain rises and they are in the thick of it. Never was any prose so quick. Miraculously pat, on the spot, each speaker caps the last, without fumbling or hesitation; their minds are full charged; it seems as if they had to rein themselves in, bursting with energy as they are, alive and alert to their finger tips. It is we who fumble, make irrelevant observations, notice the chocolate or the cinnamon, the sword or the muslin, until the illusion takes hold of us, and what with the rhythm of the speech and the indescribable air of tension, of high breeding that pervades it, the world of the stage becomes the real world and the other, outside the play, but the husk and cast-off clothing.
Congreve had a coarseness of language, an extravagance of humour, and a freedom of manners which cast us back to the Elizabethans. It is like Restoration dramatists than of the Elizabethan. A great lady who spits on the floor offends where a fishwife merely amuses.
”Dr. Johnson’s dictum:
It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man better; and that their ultimate effect is to represent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated no writer of his time and standing passed through the world more privately.
Put another way - to read Congreve’s plays is to be convinced that we may learn from them many lessons much to our advantage both as writers of books and—if the division is possible—as livers of life.
Congreve’s satire seems sometimes, as Scandal says, to have the whole world for its butt. Yet there is underneath a thinking mind, a mind that doubts and questions. Nothing is stressed; sentiment never broadens into sentimentality; everything passes as quickly as a ray of light and blends as indistinguishably. To read the comedies is not to “relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated”. On the contrary, the more slowly we read him and the more carefully, the more meaning we find, the more beauty we discover.
On American fiction, I think Virginia went to a great length to try and distinguish between English and American fiction. It is very easy to see she was bent on one side of course. She goes to very great detail of how to understand American writers and their influences. It is easy to pick that she was widely read on the prose and poetry and that is why she could write on matters fiction after having sampled quite a lot. Bottom line is that in France and in Russia they take fiction seriously. Shout out to Flaubert and Tolstoy.
Leaning towers is an essay that stood out for me. I think something happened pre and post 1914. I got the feeling that in as much as Virginia was writing about Literature (writing) she was toying with several other ideas like class, environment, education, nationalities and art. It is interesting she explores the idea about war and how they affect writing. What credit she gives to the leaning towers group is that in as much they did not write great fiction or anything for that matter, they wrote honestly about themselves – Autobiographies. A writer must first begin by analyzing himself before writing about others. An education also gives skill to write beautifully. Any great artist or writer got taught, and that enables one to sit on top of the tower where you have great visibility. Sitting on a leaning tower gets your vision skewed.
O Re-reading novels, Virginia talks about method and how interesting it can be for the reader to try to figure out the battles that writers go through before settling on a particular method. As readers we all have bias whether reading prose or poetry. I would agree with Virginia on the bias that cloud the reader’s judgement by considering a few of the questions which the prospect of reading a long Victorian novel at once arouses in us as follows:
Bias 1 - First, there is the boredom of it. The national habit of reading has been formed by the drama, and the drama has always recognised the fact that human beings cannot sit for more than five hours at a stretch in front of a stage.
Bias 2 - we cannot doubt that we are by temperament and tradition poetic. There still lingers among us the belief that poetry is the senior branch of the service. If we have an hour to spend, we feel that we lay it out to better advantage with Keats than with Macaulay.
Bias 3 - that if we wish to recall our happier hours, they would be those Conrad has given us and Henry James; and that to have seen a young man bolting Meredith whole recalls the pleasure of so many first readings that we are even ready to venture a second.
When speaking about form it is true that we must receive impressions but we must relate them to each other as the author intended. We borrow form from art and the form of the novel differs from the dramatic form. In comparing Esther Waters with Jane Eyre not simply to substitute one word for another, but to insist, among all this talk of methods, that both in writing and in reading it is the emotion that must come first. I think that is such a daring statement on emotion especially coming from a man – Mr. Lubbock
Methods are unnamed, but that no writer has so many at his disposal as a novelist - He can appear in person, like Thackeray; or disappear (never perhaps completely), like Flaubert. He can state the facts, like Defoe, or give the thought without the fact, like Henry James. He can sweep the widest horizons, like Tolstoy, or seize upon one old apple-woman and her basket, like Tolstoy again. Where there is every freedom there is every licence; and the novel, open-armed, free to all comers, claims more victims than the other forms of literature all put together. There is Thackeray always taking measures to avoid a scene, and Dickens (save in David Copperfield) invariably seeking one. There is Tolstoy dashing into the midst of his story without staying to lay foundations, and Balzac laying foundations so deep that the story itself seems never to begin.
I will have to look for me some Craft in fiction by Mr. Percy Lubbock hoping it is not out of print.

On Personalities – a discourse on how writers who steep themselves in writing might not necessarily be the best people to sit around because of their weird personalities. A man like Keats is an exception to this. Critics tell us that we should be impersonal when we write, and therefore impersonal when we read. Perhaps that is true, and it may be that the greatest passages in literature have about them something of the impersonality which belongs to our own emotions at their strongest. The English judge the Greeks with their literature which they feed from.
The true art is in these great artists who manage to infuse the whole of themselves into their works, yet contrive to universalise their identity so that, though we feel Shakespeare everywhere about, we cannot catch him at the moment in any particular spot. The people whom we admire most as writers, then, have something elusive, enigmatic, impersonal about them. So much for Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë et al.

Pictures reminded me so much of Walter Sickert and Roger Fry……it is all in the art. Be it pen strokes or strokes from a brush on canvas.
Just to say this has been a worthy read. So much to pick from the brilliant mind that was Virginia and especially when I look at her influences. She encourages me to want to write every time. Such a beautiful collection of essays…..still debating whether these are better than “The common reader” because I have come out from reading this with such a long list of book recommendations it is as if I read Susan Sontag.
Always a pleasure reading essays.

[Eric Lucente · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think if I were to have picked up a novel by Woolf, I may have been more enthralled. What is apparent is her voice on the page, and her poignancy when bringing her thoughts together. This is evident as she comes to a point when discussing abstract matters, or phenomena. It is at these points which I was most entertained. I was thrilled by her description of the moment, her discussion on the location of authors, and her distaste for royalty in particular.

Where Woolf loses me - and I admit that this is definitely a personal aspect to my audience as a reader of hers - is her referential style. It is certainly the case for writers of her time and location, but it can be a tornado of names that make it hard to track. There are instances in this work where she directly quotes her references, making such essays more tangible (as I have a firm belief that reading critique does not necessitate having read the original work, but an open discussion of devices and transcript, if presented adequately can be understood nevertheless).

[Josh Laws · Rating 3 out of 5]

This essay collection was a bit of a slog for me. Woolf's stream of consciousness style is difficult to follow when you're unfamiliar with her point of reference. Several of these essays were about British artists I am unacquainted with and so there weren't many handholds for me to latch my mind to and follow her thread. Obviously, this is my own shortcoming but certainly impacted my opinion of the book.

Virginia Woolf is clearly a fantastic writer and I genuinely appreciate her voice on the page. I will need to pick up one of her novels and give it a try to see if it was just the subjects of these essays that left me feeling underwhelmed.

[Rafaela Vieira · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Aprendei a tornar-vos semelhantes aos outros. Tornai-vos indispensáveis aos outros. Porém que esta simpatia não provenha do espírito - pois pelo espírito é fácil - mas do coração, do amor para com eles.”

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some essays, like On Being Ill, were excellent. Others seemed to be inside jokes about contemporary figures that did not land with me, an apparent simpleton

[Lilya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes:
- I too would rather rub shoulders w poors at the market than read poetry. V. Woolf you’re just like me fr
- We always want what we don’t have. And what we don’t have is great American poetry, sans Walt Whitman
- How do writers criticize a system (capitalist) that they actively profit from? What does it say about the educational elite who write hollow poetry about the bourgeois, while standing in a leaning tower that was founded upon injustice and tyranny ? Are you any better than the men who created the system if you still profit from it ?
- Literature as a common ground AND necessity of public libraries ? V. Woolf the woman you are
- Being killed by an eagle dropping a tortoise on your head bc it though it was a rock is so embarrassing…
- The artist and politics is such a great essay that exemplifies current day celebrity culture and what that means in the broader political landscape. What do we want from artists/celebrities and at what point are they just saying what we want to hear for their own survival?
- Rip virgina woolf you would’ve hated prince harrys memoir
- “Words are dangerous things, let us remember. A republic might be brought into being by a poem” ¡ tea !

[Adam Gossman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lady has such a beautiful thought process.

[karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

bought at the library book sale by mom & dad's. so great, she's so brilliant .. in a crazy coincidence,the last essay is on her distaste for royalty

[Alejandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The clarity on each subject and wonderful rhythm of the prose, Woolf is always an extraordinary read.

[Jack Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this collection of essays out of the Library book sale bin.Old copy from the Hogarth Press 1947,
Having read A Room of One's Own I thought I'd give this a shot.She was not only a polemisist but an inventive
writer as well as this description of sneeze will attest.

"Here the body is gripped; and shaken; and the throat stiffens;
and the nostrils tingle;and like a rat shaken by a terrier one sneezes;
and the whole universe is shaken; mountains,snows,meadows,moon;
higgledy,piggledy,upside down,little splinters flying; and
the head is jerked up and down.
Hay fever-what a noise!"

I liked this quote from the work of Louis MacNeice (1939)

" A system that gives the few at fancy prices
their fancy lives
While ninety-nine in the hundred who never
attend the banquet
Must wash the grease of the ages off the knives."
Sound familiar?

[BookChampions · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some moments from this collection are as stunning and sublime as any of her novels. Take, for example, the final movement of "The Leaning Tower" for just a taste of such a moment.

Virginia Woolf is a master of so many literary forms, and this collection includes some utterly breath-taking sentences. Until I have read Trollope, Sterne, Spenser and more Dickens, I would get the full impact of some of her essays on the towering achievements of English literature, but it doesn't keep me from enjoying the writing nor her appreciation of the power of words.

[ema castelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante, especialmente os últimos ensaios, no entanto, na maioria é utilizada uma linguagem extremamente técnica, o que pode não ser tão acessível àqueles que não se sentem tão à vontade com as obras de Virginia Woolf.
"Assim, quando pedimos à poesia que expresse a discórdia, a incongruência, o desdém (...) o seu sotaque é muito acentuado, os seus modos são muito afetados. Em vez do que exigimos, dá-nos lindos gritos líricos de paixão;"

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have already read a good bit of this -- due to my having read The Essays of V Woolf I to V. But overall still rather enjoyable. Her essays always are

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really just wanted to read, "On Being Ill", which is fantastic, but I read all the rest of the essays. Good, but nothing jumps out as great.

[Mckinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essays about books, plays, authors and literary stuff. I prefer her novels and found several of these interesting.