Virginia Woolf

by James King

Book Overview

Exploring the relationship between Virginia Woolf's troubled life and her writing, a biography reveals her struggle with depression, use of writing to capture the joy of existence, and paradoxical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393037487
• ISBN13: 9780393037487
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 699 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent bio & critique

This is an outstanding general biography and analysis of Woolf and her writing. I read a lot of Woolf during the resurgent wave of feminism in the 1970s. Revisiting her work and reading this book in 2008 have been even more revelatory. As opposed to the obscure theorizing and arcane language of so many academics, King writes with the clarity of a journalist. The book has a brisk forward momentum and is a pleasure to read. Unlike many Woolf scholars, he doesn't seem to have a proverbial ax to grind. His analyses of certain events in Woolf's life and of her published works are judicious. King's artfully written Introduction hooked me immediately, and I stayed impressed throughout the 600+ pages. My only reservation was a few rather stereotyped comments/assumptions he makes about lesbians or women loving women, but they don't outweigh the overall value of this volume. In most writing about her, Woolf is depicted as a tragic figure, almost entirely defined by her suicide. King asserts that the fact that Woolf persisted through 59 years of crippling mental and emotional illness to achieve the literary success and philosophical influence she did "constitute[s] another kind of greatness." Well said!

Excellent bio & critique

This is an outstanding general biography and analysis of Woolf and her writing. I read a lot of Woolf during the resurgent wave of feminism in the 1970s. Revisiting her work and reading this book in 2008 have been even more revelatory. As opposed to the obscure theorizing and arcane language of so many academics, King writes with the clarity of a journalist. The book has a brisk forward momentum and is a pleasure to read. Unlike many Woolf scholars, he doesn't seem to have a proverbial ax to grind. His analyses of certain events in Woolf's life and of her published works are judicious. King's artfully written Introduction hooked me immediately, and I stayed impressed throughout the 600+ pages. My only reservation was a few rather stereotyped comments/assumptions he makes about lesbians or women loving women, but they don't outweigh the overall value of this volume. In most writing about her, Woolf is depicted as a tragic figure, almost entirely defined by her suicide. King says the fact that Woolf achieved the literary success and philosophical influence she did while struggling with mental and emotional illness for 59 years "constitute[s] another kind of greatness." Well said!

See my review

of Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf. Lee's bio is probably the gold standard, but James King's biography of VW is a great follow-on. King was willing to write much more graphically about VW's sexual frustrations, flings, and no-holds-barred quotes of VW regarding the same.