Virginia Woolf | 
|  | | | Title: | Virginia Woolf | | Author: | Hermione Lee | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 05 October, 1999 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0375701362 / 9780375701368 | | List Price: | $20.00 | | You Save: | $6.40 | | Amazon Price: | $13.60 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
"A majestic literary biography, a truly new, surprisingly fresh portrait. --
Newsday
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
National Book Critics Circle Award finalist
"A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
While Virginia Woolf--one of our century's most brilliant and mercurial writers--has had no shortage of biographers, none has seemed as naturally suited to the task as Hermione Lee. Subscribing to Virginia Woolf's own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer and the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact. Such issues as sexual abuse, mental illness, and suicide are brought into balance with the immensity of her literary achievement, her heroic commitment to her work, her generosity and wit, and her sanity and strength.
It is not often that biography offers the satisfactions of great fiction--but this is clearly what Hermione Lee has achieved. Accessible, intelligent, and deeply pleasurable to read, her Virginia Woolf will undoubtedly take its place as the standard biography for years to come.
"One of the most impressive biographies of the decade: moving, eloquent, powerful as both literary and social history."
--Financial Times
"The most distinguished study of Woolf yet." --The New Republic
Amazon.com Review
"Woolf's story is reformulated by each generation," writes Hermione Lee, a professor of English literature. But her richly human portrait, so respectful of the complexities of her subject's life, seems unlikely to be surpassed. Lee extricates Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) from clichés about madness and modernism to reveal a vigorous artist whose work is politically probing as well as psychologically delicate. She makes brilliant use of the formidable Woolf archives to let the writer speak directly to us, then comments shrewdly on her words' hidden significances. Biographies don't get much better than this.
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Customer Reviews:
• The Best So Far 18 December, 1999
Probably the best bio of Woolf we are likely to see for some time. Lee has succeeded brilliantly and gracefully in that most elusive and troublesome task of capturing the "spirit" of another human being and then conveying that without simplification or reduction. What is most moving is that Lee allows Woolf her complexity and contradictions, her courage and cowardice, her generosity and meaness, without indulging in a sort of inconoclastic glee in smashing received images of Woolf as victim or feminist icon (or any other of the several and various "Woolfs" to be found these days.) Lee's bio is a stunning feat of sympathetic imagination and rational scholarship which ranks with the other "best" bio of the last 20 years or so, Deirdre Bair's marvelous and beautiful "Simone de Beauvoir." I am grateful to both of these writers.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AX2VQ1E7OJ9E4
• Exhaustively Researched, Crisply Written, Judicious 05 December, 2001
Of the many literary biographies I've read, only Peter Ackroyd's "Dickens" seems to me as "definitive" as Ms. Lee's terrifically compelling book. One finishes it with the sense, however illusory (see Janet Malcolm's extraordinary "The Silent Woman" for a convincing argument that it must be), that the Virginia Woolf found in its pages is essentially identical to the actual woman who lived and wrote and died. Anyone with even a slight interest in her must consider this book essential reading. I found it a real page-turner throughout its considerable length despite being unconvinced of Woolf's literary eminence (except for her sparkling correspondence) and finding her character unattractive (i.e. snobbish, frigid, a false friend, etc.) even by the usual standard for writers.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1OJB1AQVIKFG1
• I Have To Agree, 24 August, 2007
this is the best biography of Virginia Woolf to date. The book is broken into four parts based on four broad periods in VW's life: 1882 - 1904; 1904 -1919; 1919 - 1929; and 1929 - 1941. The chapters, however, are theme-based; for example, Chapter 15 is "Bloomsbury"; Chapter 19 is "War"; Chapter 24 is "Monk's House"; and Chapter 37 is "Fascism". This then serves as a wonderful reference book to go back to read about specific events (war) or themes ("Bloomsbury") without having to search through an index for disjointed entries. Of the four biographies I have read of VW (Quentin Bell's, Hermione Lee's, Julia Brigg's, and James King) I recommend this biography as the one to start. King, 1994, was willing to write more about her personal relationships (read, "sexual") and is a good follow-on.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2L1KC5CTPF9UD
• A Model Literary Biography 23 November, 2008
Literary biography is a tough genre to master, but Hermione Lee has tackled one of the toughest subjects imaginable and emerged triumphant. Even those who have never picked up even an essay or short story by Virginia Woolf feel somehow familiar with her work; Michael Cunningham's The Hours: A Noveland the film based on that has taken her story and turned it into part of pop culture (albeit at a very high level.) That makes the task of producing an unbiased evaluation of Woolf's literary contributions and a balanced view of her life (both subjects of heated debate among her admirers) far more difficult than penning a standard literary biography.
Far from being scared off, Hermione Lee rises to the occasion and delves deeply into every primary source on which she can lay her hands. The result is a triumph. She is able to weave these into a compelling narrative, never allowing the vast mass of detail to distract her or bog down the pace of the book (quite an accomplishment, given the 800-900 or so pages...)Whenever the reader is poised to ask of Lee how she reaches a given conclusion, within a paragraph the answer is presented, deftly and effortlessly.
The result is a highly accomplished biography and one that should serve as a model for any other aspiring literary biographer. The Woolf that emerges is one that stands apart from the existing biographies, all of which have their own flaws (written by a family member, with all the flaws that brings; written to demonstrate that Woolf was first and foremost a victim of sexual abuse, etc.) Lee's Woolf is an independent woman who constructed a life that suited her, however little understood it may have been by those around her. Even her suicide, the darkest days of World War II, make sense in the framework of Lee's narrative, which deals with her previous mental breakdowns, her experiences during the Great War and her fear of being trapped forever in a half-world unable to write.
Even for those not familiar with Woolf's novels or the Bloomsbury Group, this is a very accessible book. Indeed, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the entire period in English literature (which saw a dramatic changing of the guard, from the oeuvres of Tennyson, Hardy and Yeats to those of Woolf, Joyce and T.S. Eliot). It can only help the novice reader approach Woolf's own works with greater understanding and confidence.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3FMZ98X1GIYV9
• I Don't Want It To End 17 September, 1999
I am taking this book slowly and am nearing the end. It is terrific and I find, on the days I take off from reading it, that I miss Virginia Woolf and want to go back to the "place" that is her life. I thank Ms. Lee for giving me a closer intimacy with Virginia Woolf.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2WE0TO71B4TR3
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