Women and Writing (Paperback)

by Virginia Woolf (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Known for her novels, and for the dubious fame of being a doyenne of the 'Bloomsbury Set', in her time Virginia Woolf was highly respected as a major essayist and critic with a special interest and commitment to contemporary literature, and women's writing in particular. This spectacular collection of essays and other writings does justice to those efforts, offering unique appraisals of Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, the Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy Richardson, Charlotte Bronte, and Katherine Mansfield, amongst many others. Gathered too, and using previously unpublished (sometimes even unsigned) journal extracts, are what will now become timeless commentaries on 'Women and Fiction', 'Professions for Women' and 'The Intellectual Status of Women'. More than half a century after the publication of A Room Of One's Own, distinguished scholar Michele Barrett cohesively brings together work which, throughout the years, has been scattered throughout many texts and many volumes. . . affording these very valuable writings the collective distinction they deserve at last.


About the Author
Born in 1882, the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth and Victorian scholar Sir Leslie Stephen, Virginia Stephen settled in 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, in 1904. This house would become the first meeting place of the now-famous Bloomsbury Group-writers, artists, and intellectuals such as E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey who, along with Virginia and her sister Vanessa, shared an intense belief in the importance of the arts and a skepticism regarding their society's conventions and restraints. It was after Virginia's 1912 marriage to Leonard Woolf-a remarkable and supportive twenty-nine-year-union-that she began to publish her major work. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915 and was followed by Night and Day (1919), Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and The Years (1937). Woolf is also admired for her contributions to literary criticism in general and to feminist criticism in particular, with A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1937) reflecting the full range of her intellectual vigor, insight, and compassion for the role cast for female artists in the modern world. Additionally, Woolf s diary and correspondence, published posthumously, provide an invaluable window into her world offer-flung relationships and interests, imaginative depth, and creative method. The victim of a lifetime of mental illness, Woolf com-mitted suicide in 1941. She left behind her a literary legacy, including The Hogarth Press, established with Leonard in 1917, which published not only Woolf s own work but that of an increasingly influential group of innovative writers-including T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Katherine Mansfield. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 24, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156936585
• ISBN-13: 978-0156936583
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,063,554 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Expanding one's view of Virginia Woolf, June 10, 2002

By	"blissengine" (Norfolk, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Barrett brought together several of Woolf's writings and criticisms about women and writing. It's a fascinating collection that expands one's view of Virginia Woolf as a writer and as a thinking, highly intelligent woman. Her reviews of some of her contemporaries or such writers as Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontës are thought-provoking and revealing about Woolf's inner life. Coupled with Barrett's insightful introduction, this book is a welcome addition to anyone's Woolf collection or to those interested in women as writers. It expands a bit on the notions presented in her famous "A Room Of One's Own".

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The woolf at the door, December 7, 2005

By	Rosemary Thornton "The Houses That Sears Built" (Norfolk, VA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Women and Writing (Paperback)

Wow, I'm really surprised that there aren't more reviews of this wonderful book.

"A Room of One's Own" was the first book that turned me onto Virginia Woolf (and I highly recommend that book, too).

However, I love "Women and Writing" for a wholly different reason. It's in this book that Woolf's essay on "the angel in the house" is included.

Are you a woman who's dreamt of becoming a writer? Go no further until you read Woolf's comments about the angel in the house. That phrase came from a Victorian-era poem by 19th Century poet Coventry Patmore. It's a sugary-sweet (and quite sickening) poem about the self-effacing woman who gives her whole being to her husband; so much so that there's nothing left of her own soul. Ick.

Woolf writes, "It was she [the angel in the house] who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her...She was intensely sympathetic. She was utterly unselfish. She sacrificed herself daily...The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. I took my pen in my hand...she slipped behind me and whispered [to me], 'My dear, you are a young woman...Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.'

"And she made as if to guide my pen...

"I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her... Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing..."

Powerful stuff.

I'm a full time writer who doesn't think too highly of wanna-be writers who spend all their time learning to write and reading about writing and thinking about writing.

However, if you're only going to read a handful of books about the craft, I recommend "A Room of One's Own" and this book, "Women and Writing."

Rose
author, The Houses That Sears Built