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  • Published: 7 November 1997
  • ISBN: 9780099732518
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 944
  • RRP: $42.99

Virginia Woolf




'It's what many people have been waiting for, a balanced and sensible study... This is a very good biography' Doris Lessing, Sunday Times

Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the truth about her marriage, her feelings for women, her prejudies and obsessions. This is a vivid, close-up portrait, returning to primary sources, and showing Woolf as occupying a distinct, even uneasy position with 'Bloomsbury'. It is a writer's life, illustrating how the concerns of her work arise and develop, and a political life, which establishes Woolf as a radically sceptical, subversive, courageous feminist. Incorporating newly discovered sources and illustrated with photos and drawings never used before, this biography is a revelation -informed, intelligent and moving.

  • Published: 7 November 1997
  • ISBN: 9780099732518
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 944
  • RRP: $42.99

About the author

Hermione Lee

Hermione Lee is a biographer, critic, and teacher of literature. Her previous books include the internationally acclaimed biography, Virginia Woolf ('One of the most impressive biographies of the decade: moving, eloquent, powerful', Financial Times) and Edith Wharton ('A feat of exhaustive research... a glorious biography', Independent on Sunday), as well as books on Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather and Philip Roth. Her collection of essays on life-writing, Body Parts, was published in 2005, and her Biography: A Very Short Introduction in 2009. In 2013 she was made a Dame for services to literary scholarship. She lives in Oxford and Yorkshire.

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Praise for Virginia Woolf

An outstanding achievement...superb

Selena Hastings, Sunday Telegraph

It is a lasting, and even a great, book. These are not terms one gets to use often, or should ever use lightly

Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

Lee's book is not only very good, but very necessary

Penelope Fitzgerald

One of the most impressive biographies of the decade: moving, eloquent, powerful

Financial Times