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Book reviews for "Woolf,_Virginia" sorted by average review score:

The Complete Shorter Fiction Of Virginia Woolf
Published in Audio Cassette by Books on Tape, Inc. (01 January, 1988)
Author: Virginia Woolf
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What a wonderfull way to learn and read
Woolf use of words is just full and rich,english as english should be.

Lady in the Looking Glass
My favorite story in this collection is "The Lady in the Lookinglass." This story contains a powerful image: the yearning to completely comprehend another person. Such longing, as the narrator distinguishes, is not desire for "dinners and visits and polite conversations," nor "things she talked about at dinner," but something deeper, "her profounder state of being that one wanted to catch and turn to words."

On one hand, Isabella represents a synecdoche. If the narrator understands her deeply enough, he could "know everything there was to be known about Isabella," but also life, and perhaps all persons as well.

On the other hand, perhaps Isabella objectifies the inability of one person to scale walls of privacy and anonymity another erects to protect herself from intimacy.

Our sympathy straddles that wall, perhaps lying first with Isabella who veils herself, then with the narrator who longs to know her. We aren't shown why Isabella has become the trembling convolvulus. But no one's face should reflect "masklike indifference." The phrase is not congruous -- the need to mask is anything but indifferent. And can't we concede tragedy to anyone who, after 50-60 years, remains a person for whom another can claim, "The comparison showed how very little, after all these years, one knew about her; for it is impossible that any woman of flesh and blood of fifty-five or sixty should be really a wreath or a tendril"? This is a heartbreaking image.

Wonderful first steps to understanding Woolf
Woolf is not typically known as a writer of short stories -- "sketches" as she called them. However, the short fiction that she wrote provides a wonderful introduction to her narrative style. The early "Mark on the Wall," "Kew Gardens," and "An Unwritten Novel" give to the reader a sense of how Woolf's technique works within a smaller package than the usual assigned Woolf reading. Her feminist (apologies to VW since she considered the word dead once women were able to earn a living) leanings come through in "A Society" and "Moments of Being: 'Slater's Pins have no Points'." Woolf's early sketches are where she formed her interior monologue style, within which one thing leads to another as the work progresses. These short fiction works should be required reading for anyone delving into Woolf. Possibly those who read these sketches before they dive into the novels would understand a bit better of what Woolf's fiction is made. Excellent.


Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Barron's Book Notes)
Published in Paperback by Barrons Educational Series (1985)
Authors: Michael Adams and Murrary Bromberg
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Can Albee be anything but 5 stars?
Loved it. Wished I read it before I saw the movie, that way I would have had a purer vision of the play.

Something you truly need to experience.
This is a great modern play. I loved all the references and word games

Such richness!
I'm directing the play in The Netherlands. Never had to dig so deep as in this play. Did the play before, and now I did some completely new discoveries. What about this: I think Nick is the only true victim. May change that opinion the next rehearsel: 'Woolf' never stops amazing!


Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf
Published in Hardcover by American Philological Association (1996)
Author: Panthea Reid
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A "must" for all Virginia Woolf fans!
Panthea Reid, author of Virginia Woolf: Art And Affection, is a professor of English at Louisiana State University. She has authored a book on William Faulkner and edited one on Walker Percy, both gifted, but very eccentric Southern writers. Reid must have a predilection toward gifted artists who produce astounding work, but who never find a way to fit in with society in general. In this book Reid contends that Woolf was what we in the south call a high maintenance female. Aside from her manic/depressive disorder, Reid asserts the many psychological blows, real and imagined, Woolf suffered during her childhood left her with wounds that never healed, no matter the outside success and acclaim she enjoyed in her later life. Marriage, travel, literary fame and fortune were not enough to keep Woolf from "...put(ting) stones in her pocket...walk(ing) into the water, and sink(ing) into a tidal current, hoping to fine 'rest of the floor of the sea'" on the morning of March 28, 1941. As a child, Woolf desperately longed for the attention and affection of her beautiful but emotionally detached mother; suffered emotional scars at the hands of her stern father; endured sexual abuse from one of her half-brothers; and was pathologically attached to her sister, Vanessa, herself a free spirit whom no one could restrain. Because her many childhood needs were not sated, and because her bi-polar disorder hadn't been given a name, diagnosis or treatment, Woolf spent the rest of her life enduring lingering bouts of depression, fragile health and periods of self-doubt, despite a tremendous gift for putting words on paper. By their very nature, the book's reliance on copious correspondence between Virginia and her intimates gives the reader an excellent glimpse into the day-to-day life of an upper middle class family living in Victorian England. Some of the details are tedious, while others explain the confinement Woolf felt at being a female in a very controlling, male-dominated society. Although she was obviously gifted, she was devalued by Victorian mores. This book is meticulously researched and annotated. It appears Reid had almost unlimited access to family correspondence, records and photographs. While the book might be overwhelming at times in by the sheer weight of the research, it is a scholarly work that deserves place on a library shelf and should be included in any serious study of Woolf and the life that produced her enormous, if fragile, talent. Recommended for Woolf fans and those curious about Victorian life. Enjoy!

Terry H. Mathews Reviewer

A first rate research job....

For a person who doesn't read much non-fiction, this book is a bit overwhelming. With that said, it should be said that this book is also one of the most thoroughly researched books I've read on Virginia Woolf.

Woolf is one of my favorite authors. I hadn't been too interested in her life until I read Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours'. Since that time, I've read what I could find about her life, but nothing compares to this volume, for sheer quantity of research, notes and professional opinions.

I found this book in a Bargain Rack. I'm sorry it's out of print. It would make a fabulous research tool for any student of Woolf, or of the Victorian Age.


Bloomsbury at Home
Published in Hardcover by Harry N Abrams (2000)
Author: Pamela Todd
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Bloomsbury at Home by Pamela Todd
This is a truly wonderful book. Todd describes the homes of many of the people who participated in the Bloomsbury group, in addition to the complex interrelationships of the people involved, their parties and their artwork. She is one of the most focused biographers I have read: always interesting, always to the point. Considering the number of people she has to write about, it is amazing that she never strays from her focus. The book is beautifully designed and illustrated. It is a book that I will go back to over and over.

Bloomsbury in Your Home
Bloomsbury at Home is a welcome addition to the bibliography of titles about the very interesting, influential and eccentric group of artists who flourished in England and France during the early part of the twentieth century. These multitalented poets, writers, painters and thinkers lived life enthusiastically and shared ideas, activities and loves with each other and the world. Pamela Todd's extended essay on the Bloomsburyites, including Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant captures their individuality, and sometimes irrationality, while celebrating their devotion to freedom of thought. The really spectacular and original contribution of Bloomsbury at Home, however, comes with the reproduction of a number of paintings and drawings by the Bloomsbury group, which are otherwise difficult to find gathered in one place. This book is a treasured and inexpensive addition to my library of literary and artistic movements, and I highly recommend it to others interested in the relationship of the visual and literary arts to modern society before the Second World War.


The Diary of Virginia Woolf
Published in Paperback by Harcourt (1981)
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Simply beautiful
Of all of Virginia's diaries (there are five volumes), volumes 3 and 4 are perhaps the most interesting, if only because they span the period in which she wrote her classics such as Orlando, To The Lighthouse, and The Waves (which itself literally spans the period between Vol 3 and Vol 4.)

If you read the collected Diaries and Woman Of Letters by Phyllis Rose, you will gain a vital series of insights into the life and thoughts of this most haunting of female writers.

Whenever I think of Virginia, I always think of the lines from "Vincent" by Don Maclean...

This world was never meant
for one as beautiful as you...

If you have never read any Virginia Woolf, I would respectfully suggest you rent a copy of Sally Potter's Orlando. While Sally takes artistic license with the novel, she has created a very sympathetic work of Art.

This diary above all gives you many insights into her thought processes and her writing career, including her reactions to the publication of her works and their reception by the public and the sub-species known as Critics.

Recommended.

Sublime writing
Woolf is fascinating, even when describing the most mundane details of daily life. Her writing style is as beautiful here as in her fiction, and so the diary is well worth reading for that alone. Plus, nearly every page contains a reference to Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, or some other Bloomsbury luminary. She isn't always completely truthful or straightforward, but she is always supremely entertaining. However, despite a number of very helpful footnotes, the editor cannot provide explanations and clarifications for every entry, so it helps to be somewhat familiar with Woolf's life before reading her diaries.


Moments of Being
Published in Audio Cassette by Books on Tape (1920)
Author: Virginia Woolf
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Possibly the greatest autobiographical work ever written
Virginia's genius is all over this volume, esp in A Sketch of the Past. From the first sensations of childhood (waves splashing against the shore) to the tragedy of the death of her mother and sister, it is the most revealing work of creativity ever written. You'll learn about her life, her work, and even how you might become a great writer. Examine the parallels with To the Lighthouse and you'll be amazed. Yes, this is how she come to be what she is; and her life and what she writes.

Woolf's most beautiful autobiographical writing
People who have enjoyed Woolf's novels or diaries will surely find her essay "A Sketch of the Past" deeply moving and helpful in illuminating her other works. In "Sketch," the longest essay in this volume, Woolf recounts her earliest childhood memories--both beautiful (hearing the waves break on the shore at her family's summer home) and sinister (her stepbrother's unwelcome sexual advances when she was a small child). She develops a theory about memory and about transcendent experience in this essay. She discusses her powerful drive to reshape and write about the past: "I feel that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves attached to it, so that we shall be able to live our lives through from the start." In this essay Woolf proposes that in moments of ecstasy we have a meaningful vision of the world itself: "it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we--I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words, we are the music; we are the thing itself. And I see this when I have a shock."


Who Killed Virginia Woolf?: A Psychobiography
Published in Hardcover by Human Sciences Pr (01 June, 2000)
Author: Alma H. Bond
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Great Insight on Virginia Woolf
After seeing "The Hours" I knew I had to read more on Ms Woolf. What a great woman she was. What a great tragedy when the world lost her.

This book is definitely a must for anyone wanting to know Virginia Woolf.

This book had to be written
When I taught a graduate seminar on Virginia Woolf at Iowa State University, I told my students to read this book if they wanted, as students always do, to understand the multitude of reasons for Woolf's suicide.

Most biographies skirt the responsibilities of the other people in Woolf's life -- the exact topic that Alma Bond takes on so thoroughly. This book had to be written exactly because other writers have not been willing to examine all dimensions of Woolf's death. Hurray for Alma Bond for applying her psychoanalist's expertise on this literary/historical subject!


Essays Of Virginia Woolf Vol 3 1919-1924: Vol. 3, 1919-1924
Published in Paperback by Harvest Books (1991)
Author: Virginia Woolf
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More essays by Virginia Woolf
This is the third of a (yet uncompleted) series of collections of Virginia Woolf's essays edited by Andrew McNeillie. Of the projected series of a total of six books of Woolf's essays only four have been published so far. When this great undertaking has finished, we will at last have at our disposal the first COMPLETE publication of all the essays and reviews of one of the best-read women in the western world. This series is of immense significance to Woolf scholars,students and lovers, of which they are increasingly many, not only because all her essays will be collected in a neat series but also, and more importantly, because in all the books of the series, including this volume, there are/will be non-fiction pieces by Woolf which are no longer available to the 'common reader' as they can only be found in the archives of the newspapers, journals and magazines that Woolf wrote for in her times. Till recently, apart from her well-known essays 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas', Woolf's talent and importance as a critic had not been fully appreciated. This volume, along the others in the series, is both one of the factors and the effects of the recent surge of interest in Woolf's critical art, and is an extremely valuable contribution in that it makes manifest the whole range of writing of a literary figure who excelled not just in fiction but was also an equally masterful essay writer and polemical commentator and reviewer of modern times.


Jacob's Room & The Waves: Two complete novels
Published in Paperback by Harcourt (1978)
Author: Virginia Stephen, Woolf
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Existence through the eye of eternity
In this somewhat puzzling novel the sun rises and it sets, six people grow together from infant children to old age, and the waves crash endlessly upon the shore. That is about as close as you will get to a plot in this book. Everything else that happens, school, marriage, even death, seem to be nothing more than passing intensities amid the overbearing silence that is the roar of existence.

I picked up this book after reading Mrs Dalloway. I loved Dalloway. It was the first Woolf book I had read and it blew me away. In comparison, reading The Waves was like taking a sandblaster to my eyeballs. She uses stream of consciousness as a medium to delve as deep as she possibly can into the intricacy of existence. Not much happens on a specific and literal level outside of the rising of the sun, but the endless poetry pouring forth from the perceptive cores (I'd say "minds" but I think it goes a bit beyond even that) of these six characters speaks volumes on the fearsome intensity of beauty, the vast complexity of sadness, and the endless endless isolation of the human soul.

It is at times so deep and so personal that I felt more than a bit uncomfortable reading it. The effort is well worth it however. Woolf more than any other author I have read, struggles to communicate the hidden message contained in all stories and books... A message forever clouded in meanings and phrases... Lost in its own words.

This is my favorite book.
I was introduced to Virginia Woolf in college when I took an entire class devoted to her work. Although I had never read any of her work before, I quickly became a fan. My professor saved the best for last - The Waves. This book is the most poetic, most profound, most intimate book I have ever read.

No one speaks in this book. You follow the characters' lives from childhood to adulthood by entering their minds and listening to their thoughts. At first it is difficult to figure out what is going on. There is no narration except short poetic passages about the sea and the sun's placement over it preceding each section of the book (and each period of the characters' lives). By the middle of the book, you know who is speaking without reading the name of the character. You know how they think.

I strongly encourage anyone who is even slightly curious to buy this book. This small investment can change how you view the world. The Waves takes much longer to get through than some whodunit, but that's the beauty of it. My husband and I read a passage at night before going to bed. It's best when read slowly, with time to reflect after a small amount of pages. You'll be highlighting sentences that make great quotes as you go. What a glorious book!

wAvEs of emotion disolving the "I"
You have never read a book like this. But don't let that intimidate. This is her most experimental work, but it is still much more accesible than many other modernists. Her sentences and paragraphs are intelligible; it's more the accumulation of pages that might begin to baffle some readers. Woolf obviously requires a good deal of concentration, but her best works are rewarding in a way that many difficult writers are not. (You won't need a professor nearby or a mess of annotations to guide you through dense thickets of allusion-filled, abstract prose.)

I consider this to be Woolf's greatest work. Mrs. Dalloway may be a more pleasurable read and more consistently a "masterpiece", but the Waves is often so intense and beautiful that it's devastating. In fact, there are times that one is a bit overwhelmed by the surfeit of emotion, poetic words, unremitting interiority.

My Woolf pix in order: 1. Waves 2. Dalloway 3. Jacob's Room 4. A Room of One's Own 5. Orlando

I personally feel that To the Lighthouse is more of a work to be appreciated than liked--it's simply too refined. And I couldn't make it through Between the Acts--too many upper class English people sitting around a table in the country sipping tea and performing their subtle, boring manners.

Wait, I can't end on a sour note: Woolf is a bloody delight!


Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, and Adrienne Rich
Published in Hardcover by Southern Illinois Univ Pr (Trd) (1995)
Author: Krista Ratcliffe
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Superb criticism.
This important study is highly astute in its analysis--and very accessible. Ratcliffe is a first-rate thinker and writer.

A wonderful book
Three great geniuses are presented here. Where would we be without the unbelievably courageous Mary Daly? And Virginia Woolf is still an important early voice, especially as presented by Jane Marcus and other brilliant radicals. As for Rich, is there a more brilliant writer in "America" today? I think not.

magnificent
This book dares to include three of the very greatest writers of the century. Mary Daly is the incredibly courageous voice of contemporary radical feminism, Woolf is still valuable for her essays, and Adrienne Rich is a truly visionary poet who has changed the way contemporary discourse is conducted. A wonderful book.


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