Virginia Woolf published two famous volumes of collected essays: The Common Reader, First and Second Series. The essays in this volume have been collected after her death by her husband Leonard Woolf. They had appeared in various journals, but never in book form.
Part One: The Art of Fiction (about
two thirds of the book) is all about reading. It contains the famous "Hours in a Library" and "The…mehrVirginia Woolf published two famous volumes of collected essays: The Common Reader, First and Second Series. The essays in this volume have been collected after her death by her husband Leonard Woolf. They had appeared in various journals, but never in book form.
Part One: The Art of Fiction (about two thirds of the book) is all about reading. It contains the famous "Hours in a Library" and "The Anatomy of Fiction", pieces on Meredith, Henry James and K. Mansfield, reflections on the Gothic and the Supernatural in Fiction and many others.
Part Two: The Art of Biography treats Horace Walpole, Laurence Sterne and Samuel Johnson, but also Sir Walter Raleigh and other non-literary subjects.
The prose style is as exquisite as ever. The book itself is an elegant but robust big-format paperback which will be a life-long companion and stand many re-readings.
