This rich introduction to the art of Virginia Woolf contains the complete texts of five short stories and eight essays, together with substantial excerpts from the longer fiction and nonfiction. An ideal volume for those encountering Woolf for the first time as well as for those already devoted to her work. Edited and with a Preface by Mitchell A. Leaska.

A far cry from her wistful and introspective fiction, Woolf's essays on literature read as lively, droll, and conversational. These essays focus on famous literary figures as well as the craft of fiction; written in confident but inviting prose designed specifically for what Woolf called the common reader, they interweave biography, wit, social commentary, and literary analysis. Woolf typically seems disinterested in offering definitive arguments or reaching grand conclusions. She instead concerns herself with viewing a given writer or topic from several interpretive angles so that she might reveal as much about her subject as she can in a single essay, to a broad audience consisting of non-academic readers. Favorite essays included "Notes on an Elizabethan Play," "Modern Fiction," "Outlines," and "How it Strikes a Contemporary." (Michael)

"This anthology of essays collects the most provocative, the most thorough, the most intriguing articles on Woolf published in this [Modern fiction studies] journal over the course of its half century of publication history"--Pref.

First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in Kent in 1926, this enchanting short essay by the towering Modernist writer Virginia Woolf celebrates the importance of the written word. With a measured but ardent tone, Woolf weaves together thought and quote, verse and prose into a moving tract on the power literature can have over its reader, in a way which still resounds with truth today. I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”

This first volume of its kind contains the complete text of and guide to Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, plus Mrs. Dalloway's Party and numerous journal entries and letters by Virginia Woolf relating to the book's genesis and writing. The distinguished novelist Francine Prose has selected these pieces as well as essays and appreciations, critical views, and commentary by writers famous and unknown. Now with additional scholarly commentary by Mark Hussey, professor of English at Pace University, this complete volume illuminates the creation of a celebrated story and the genius of its author. Includes essays and commentary from: Michael Cunningham E. M. Forster Margo Jefferson James Wood Mary Gordon Elaine Showalter Daniel Mendelsohn Sigrid Nunez Deborah Eisenberg Elissa Schappell

A delightful collection of essays penned by Woolf for what she saw as the common reader. An informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage.

Virgina Woolf is the greatest of all British women writers and one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century writing. She was a novelist utterly immersed in books, wholly original, passionate, vivid and with a steely dedication to her art. Yet given that what we value about Woolf's life is her nine great novels, most writing about her tends to revolve around her social life and the planet of the Bloomsbury set. Julia Briggs' aim in this fresh, absorbing new book is to put the writing back absolutely at the centre of Woolf's life; to read that life through her books, using the novels themselves to create a compelling new form of biography. Using Woolf's own matchless commentary on the creative process through her letters, diaries and essays, Julia Briggs has produced a book which is a convincing, moving picture of an artist at full stretch, but also a brilliant meditation on the whole nature of creativity.

This study argues that Virginia Woolf taught herself to be a feminist artist and public intellectual through her revisionary reading. Fernald gives a clear view of Woolf's tremendous body of knowledge and her contrast references to past literary periods

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

Explores Virginia Woolf's affinity with the early modern period and her sense of being reborn as writer and reader through the creation of an alternative tradition of reading and writing whose roots go back to the Elizabethans and beyond. The author, a Fellow in English at Girton College, Cambridge, critiques Woolf's ideas through a discussion of particular writers--Montaigne, Donne, Pepys and Bunyan, Dorothy Osborne and Madame de Sevigne. She considers the forms traditionally associated with women, such as the essay, the personal letter and diary, in the context of printing, the body, and the relationship between amateurs and professionals. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR