Virginia Woolf: Selected Essays

These essays are completely self-contained, and can be read for the pleasure which Virginia Woolf thought was the purpose of the essay form. But they also illuminate her larger works of fiction. They are a small proportion of her total output (which runs to five volumes) but they represent some of the most important themes which pervade her work as a whole. They are also amazingly prophetic - on women as writers, on the death of Empire, and on the speed and locomotion of modern life. She writes about the Tube, the telephone, the motor car, and aircraft, which were all recent developments. The essays are arranged in chronological order in four groups - reading and writing, biography, feminism, and contemporary culture. She had inherited the skill of writing from her father Leslie Stephen and by the time these essays were written had honed that skill into a high form of art... Read more >>

more VIRGINIA WOOLF books