Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf [Hardcover]

Mitchell Leaska (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) once mused that no biographer had ever been "subtle enough and bold enough to present that queer amalgamation of dream and reality, that perpetual marriage of granite and rainbow" that is an artist's life. Noted Woolf scholar Mitchell Leaska has now answered this daunting challenge in an uncompromising, deeply informed biography filled with new insights and fresh revelations. In addition to examining her crucial role in Hogarth Press, which published works by T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Sigmund Freud, and Katherine Mansfield, Leaska recounts the hard realities of Woolf's life and how she transformed them in her iridescent novels, essays, letters, and diaries.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

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

From Publishers Weekly

"Oh but the divine joy of being mistress of my mind again!" Virginia Woolf once wrote. Apparently inheriting mental instability as well as intellectual brilliance, she employed words and recycled remembrance to exorcise her family ghosts. According to Leaska, an English professor at New York University and editor of Woolf's early journals, A Passionate Apprentice, which he exploits relentlessly here, Woolf's writing "twisted pleasure from pain" and created defenses against her manic-depressive cycles. Through Leaska's Freudian lens, Woolf?who blamed an elder half-brother's childhood molestations for her being "sexually cowardly"?was actually concealing oedipal fantasies about her domineering father, evoked in such novels as To the Lighthouse and The Years. Though the psychological sleuthing and the recounting of Bloomsbury homosexual and lesbian rapacity may be provocative, this work scants the actual texture of life?how people really lived?and intrusively insists on its unfortunate title (a 1958 title of a posthumous Woolf essay collection) by employing it metaphorically at least 11 times. Still, this book will stir more controversy than most of the seemingly endless run of Woolf biographies, the most recent of which was Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf (Forecasts, March 24, 1997). In its shrewd probing for the wellsprings of the writer's creativity, Leaska's life can't be ignored. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 513 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374166595
• ISBN-13: 978-0374166595
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,235,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating book mirrors a fascinating life, July 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf (Hardcover)

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

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

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

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

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the old ways of biographical indexing, October 15, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Glens Falls NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf (Hardcover)

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

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars terrible work, February 2, 2011

By 

Petunia (Richmond, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf (Hardcover)

This biography is misleading at best and misogynistic in many respects. It presumes to diagnose Woolf mentally based on false and inadequate information. It reduces Woolf to a case study, a medical patient. For a comprehensive, well researched, sound, and equitable biography see Hermione Lee's 1996 Virginia Woolf

And let's not call her Virginia, folks. She's not your friend. She's an author who deserves a great deal more respect than either Leaska or one of our Amazon reviewers gives her.