Customer Reviews

Virginia Woolf

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Many biographies have been published about the life of Virginia Woolf but John Lehmann does a brilliant job compressing her life in a manner that does not diminish its effect. John Lehmann is a poet, critic and biographer that has worked for Virginia and Leonard at Hogarth Press for many years;

"In 1930, the job was vacant again, and the Woolfs thought seriously of giving up the Press; but they eventually recruited the present writer, who was at the Press during the last stages of the writing of The Waves, and its publication"

This gives the book great credibility as the author had first hand experience and interaction with Virginia and her world. This book also houses 136 illustrations and photographs of every stage in Virginia's life which add so much depth to the writing. This is a great introduction to Virginia's world and a must have for every avid fan. I devoured it in one sitting and you will too.

As with all the volumes of this series this work is filled with a large number of photos that seem to tell their own story of the life. The text is excellent .Woolf is a writer I know little about but this work tells her story in a painfully clear way. The early death of her mother, the tyrannical and overwhelmingly difficult if intellectually inspiring father whose death enabled her to be free enough to write are essential elements. What Clive Bell called the greatest luck of her life, her marriage to the devoted Leonard Woolf. Lehmann describes with compassion and understanding Woolf's mental illness, and how this would become most severe towards the end of writing one of her novels. He also gives short summaries of the novels and outlines their special qualities. This is a good introductory volume by a very sympathetic biographer.

Got this on a whim and read it bit by bit over a couple of weeks. I've never read any Woolf, mainly heard of her from the title of the movie "Who's afraid of ... ".

Woolf's story is laid out with ample detail, but curiously seems a bit hollow, as perhaps the author respects her privacy a bit much. Her early life is filled with detail, and the development of the Bloomsbury Group is well described. It made this reader envious at the way that the Group studied and mastered the world of art and literature. Her later life is more sketchy, and concentrates on over-praising her best works and why her friends each were famous. What her husband did for a living remains mostly a mystery to me, aside from running a printing press. Her suicide and its aftermath get minimal discussion.

The thorough inclusion of pictures, artwork, drawings, and sculpture made the reading very enjoyable - it helps that the entire crowd was highly photogenic and artistically talented.

Overall, not a perfect biography, but in the end so colorful and bucolic in the sense of English gentry that I recommend this book.