Virginia Woolf A Biography Author:Quentin Bell "Virginia Woolf was a Miss Stephen." So begins this superb biography, the first truly full-scale treatment of the writer's life to be published. As a nephew of Virginia Woolf, Quentin Bell brings to his book the authority that family intimacy affords, but he does so without bias, evasion, or sentimentality, and as an observer rather than as a pa... more »rticipant. His intention is personal history, not literary criticism, and this he achieves impressively, By the end of his narrative Virginia Woolf has assumed reality outside the elusive world of her art.
She was one of four children, born into a gifted family whose ancestors include generations of writers. As a child, Virginia is remembered for her beauty -- flame-cheeked and green eyed -- her terrible rages, and her precocious command of language. She was the family storyteller who could make everyone laugh, and it was decided early that her sister Vanessa would be a painter and Virginia a writer. Her first efforts at composition are seen in a letter written at the age of six to her godfather, James Russell Lowell.
The account continues through her adolescence and first serious breakdown to her awkward introduction into London society, the Bloomsbury years, and marriage to Leonard Woolf -- "the wisest decision of her life." The author candidly discusses the question of her sexuality and her mental illness and their effect on her marriage and her other close relationships.
While the ordinary events of her life unfold, the great novels are seen taking shape, accompanied by the anguish of a creative genius that was closely allied to her madness, the terrors of publication and reviews, and periods of enjoyment in her growing fame. The book concludes, simply and movingly, with her suicide in 1941.« less