Virginia Woolf
by Hermione Lee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hermione LeeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0375701362
Number of pages: 944
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Virginia Woolf
Book Review: A Model Literary Biography
Summary: 5 Stars
Literary biography is a tough genre to master, but Hermione Lee has tackled one of the toughest subjects imaginable and emerged triumphant. Even those who have never picked up even an essay or short story by Virginia Woolf feel somehow familiar with her work; Michael Cunningham's The Hours: A Noveland the film based on that has taken her story and turned it into part of pop culture (albeit at a very high level.) That makes the task of producing an unbiased evaluation of Woolf's literary contributions and a balanced view of her life (both subjects of heated debate among her admirers) far more difficult than penning a standard literary biography.
Far from being scared off, Hermione Lee rises to the occasion and delves deeply into every primary source on which she can lay her hands. The result is a triumph. She is able to weave these into a compelling narrative, never allowing the vast mass of detail to distract her or bog down the pace of the book (quite an accomplishment, given the 800-900 or so pages...)Whenever the reader is poised to ask of Lee how she reaches a given conclusion, within a paragraph the answer is presented, deftly and effortlessly.
The result is a highly accomplished biography and one that should serve as a model for any other aspiring literary biographer. The Woolf that emerges is one that stands apart from the existing biographies, all of which have their own flaws (written by a family member, with all the flaws that brings; written to demonstrate that Woolf was first and foremost a victim of sexual abuse, etc.) Lee's Woolf is an independent woman who constructed a life that suited her, however little understood it may have been by those around her. Even her suicide, the darkest days of World War II, make sense in the framework of Lee's narrative, which deals with her previous mental breakdowns, her experiences during the Great War and her fear of being trapped forever in a half-world unable to write.
Even for those not familiar with Woolf's novels or the Bloomsbury Group, this is a very accessible book. Indeed, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the entire period in English literature (which saw a dramatic changing of the guard, from the oeuvres of Tennyson, Hardy and Yeats to those of Woolf, Joyce and T.S. Eliot). It can only help the novice reader approach Woolf's own works with greater understanding and confidence.
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