Product Description

A biography of Virginia Woolf which moves freely between a detailed life-story and attempts to understand significant questions. She is presented as occupying a distinct and even uneasy position within the Bloomsbury Set, and also as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60513 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 600 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"My God, how does one write a biography?" Virginia Woolf once asked. Hermione Lee begins her biography, Virginia Woolf, with the same question. Over the years, many biographers have approached Woolf from various directions: she was mad; she was abused; she was weak; she was a survivor. Quentin Bell, Woolf's nephew, wrote his biography of Woolf from a relative's perspective; now Hermione Lee presents yet another interpretation of the great writer's life. Certainly, she had her work cut out. Virginia Woolf was famous among her contemporaries for exaggeration and invention, making even her private diaries suspect, yet often within the pages of her fiction exist solid strands of autobiography. "The life-writer must explore and understand the gap between the outer self...and the secret self," Lee writes. In compiling her account of Woolf's life, she attempted to encompass both selves by researching letters, diaries, and personal papers, as well as Woolf's published works and previous biographies. Amazingly, she has organised this mass of information to present a clear and forceful picture of a woman who was brave, brilliant, and all too aware of the contradictions that raged within her. Virginia Woolf is a well written, well considered portrait befitting its maddeningly elusive subject.

Selina Hastings, Sunday Telegraph
'An outstanding achievement...superb'

Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
'...it is a lasting, and even a great, book. These are not terms one gets to use often, or should ever use lightly.'

Customer Reviews

An outstanding biography - I couldn't put it down
This book probably deserves more than 5 crowns.

Although Hermione Lee is an academic, and the work is scholarly, I was intrigued and my interest was caught right until the very end. I am not a scholar, and didn't find the book difficult.

Having read a number of books about Virginia Woolf, I can safely say that this one is outstanding. Hermione Lee is obviously a more than competent biographer, and the attention to detailed research in this work is superlative.

If were to make one tiny criticism, it is that the author tends to assume the reader will come prepared with a little background information, and thus if you are very new to Bloomsbury, may I suggest you read a general overview before embarking on this very extensive study.

I would advise anyone who has a genuine interest in the subject to take the time to read this big volume with the care it deserves - it is well worth any effort you may feel it demands of you. It is a very well written and highly informative study of a writer's life and the context in which she wrote, whilst at the same time exploring 'life-writing'. As such it would appeal to anyone who is interested in an imaginative account of one woman's attempt to meet the tension between autobiographical and fiction writing, head-on.

A template for the perfect biography
One of the finest biographies around (along with Gibson's biography of Dali) - well turned, fascinatingly collated and considered for the inquisitive reader. Hermione Lee creates a template for the perfect biography; grouping thematic matter on Woolf while maintaining a strong chronological thread; filling the book with fasincating literary detail, but balancing this with gossip from the Bloomsbury group and beyond, and detailed historical contextualisation.

A masterpiece, engaging from start to finish, leaving the reader with a strong sense of Woolf, her work and her circle.

One of the best biographies I have read
Hermione Lee does justice to an equally talented author. I was rather phased by the length of the book when I initially came to read it, but it's length didn't bother me in the slightest when I began reading. The language isn't heavy and you can easily cover 30 pages within minutes. Whereas Quentin Bell's biography touches very briefly on all aspects of her life, Lee leaves no aspect of her life untouched. In fact, she goes full tilt into some of the most complex issues within Woolf's life, with a particularly arresting chapter on 'Madness'.
I strongly recommend this biography. I'd almost say this is just as good a piece of Literature as one of Woolf's own novels.