Moments of Being: Autobiographical Writings

By Virginia Woolf

Book Overview

Moments of Being is "the single most moving and beautiful thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote about her own life" (The New York Times) and her only autobiographical writing, published years after her death.
This collection of five pieces written for different audiences spanning almost four decades reveals the remarkable unity of Virginia Woolf's art, thought, and sensibility.?
"Reminiscences," written during her apprenticeship period, exposes the childhood shared by Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, while "A Sketch of the Past" illuminates the relationship with her father, Leslie Stephens, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual a writer. Of the final three pieces, composed for the Memoir Club, which required absolute candor of its members, two show Woolf at the threshold of artistic maturity and one shows a confident writer poking fun at her own foibles.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156619180
• ISBN13: 9780156619189
• Release Date: August 1985
• Publisher: Mariner Books Classics
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

"Between the Acts" -- Wow!

"Between the Acts" probably requires a second reading, just to get the names of characters straight. Once I understood that the writer would skip back and forth from the stage where the play is being performed to the audience, what they are doing and saying, and what they look like, I was immersed in this story. So much of the writer's observation comes across as poetry, that I am reminded of "The Waves," which is undoubtedly the richest novel I have ever read. No, Virginia Woolf is not for every reader, but the impact of her art lingers on. Once the book is closed, we understand that we have touched greatness.

definitely a page turner

This book kept me reading from day to night. I really got caught up in the life of Virginia Woolf. It was a very realistic look at the life of the author in her own words. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Essential reading for Woolf readers

This biographical work is essential in understanding the author's greatest works. She discusses "scene making" and how it relates to memory. After reading this I plan to reread "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs. Dalloway."

Possibly the greatest autobiographical work ever written

Virginia's genius is all over this volume, esp in A Sketch of the Past. From the first sensations of childhood (waves splashing against the shore) to the tragedy of the death of her mother and sister, it is the most revealing work of creativity ever written. You'll learn about her life, her work, and even how you might become a great writer. Examine the parallels with To the Lighthouse and you'll be amazed. Yes, this is how she come to be what she is; and her life and what she writes.

Woolf's most beautiful autobiographical writing

People who have enjoyed Woolf's novels or diaries will surely find her essay "A Sketch of the Past" deeply moving and helpful in illuminating her other works. In "Sketch," the longest essay in this volume, Woolf recounts her earliest childhood memories--both beautiful (hearing the waves break on the shore at her family's summer home) and sinister (her stepbrother's unwelcome sexual advances when she was a small child). She develops a theory about memory and about transcendent experience in this essay. She discusses her powerful drive to reshape and write about the past: "I feel that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves attached to it, so that we shall be able to live our lives through from the start." In this essay Woolf proposes that in moments of ecstasy we have a meaningful vision of the world itself: "it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we--I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words, we are the music; we are the thing itself. And I see this when I have a shock."