I must admit that I knew very little about Woolf before reading this. Where I think Lee succeeds, is to look at Virginia Woolf objectively, but sympathetically – putting her firmly centre stage of her story and examining her literary work alongside her life. However, Lee questions how exactly should she write Virginia Woolf’s biography? As a victim, through her family history, class, as part of the Bloomsbury group? For she can be seen in many ways, through many different aspects of her personality or life. This is a biography of great depth and detail, which left me feeling that I understood Virginia Woolf far more than I had before I started it. If you are a fan of Woolf this is a must read. There are lots of interesting leads to follow and I noted down several references to books which I will follow and read (if time allows). What Lee does do well though is analyse the historical context and look at the lives and work of those around her. I could at this point go on about how much I learnt about Woolf (a lot) and about what a wonderful writer she was (but you already know that). She has also written a book called Reading in Bed, which is a history of women’s reading habits, which looks fascinating.
Lee has written biographies of Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Bowen and Penelope Fitzgerald and I have a sudden desire to read them all! She has also written about biography and about Philip Roth (that one I really must read!).
For those of us who want a comprehensive literary study of Woolf this is ideal.
It would be so easy to get lost amidst all the mass of studies and writings about Woolf but Lee’s book is an excellent start for those wishing to study Woolf in depth. She has been reinterpreted by feminism, Marxism, modernism and most everyone else since. It is one of the best biographies I’ve read and is a must for any fan of Woolf.Īs Lee herself points out Woolf’s voluminous writings and correspondence is still being published but those who knew her are mostly gone. This is very much not a casual read easy biography as it is so steeped in Woolf’s work, her life, Bloomsbury and her ideas about writing and women. Lee knows her subject and her subject’s works and is able to separate the myth from the reality. It is a literary biography and so there is much emphasis on Woolf’s writing. This is an excellent, erudite and extremely detailed biography weighing in at well over 700 pages (without footnotes).
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