Virginia Woolf's Women - Softcover

Curtis, Vanessa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0750934069 ISBN 13: 9780750934060

Publisher: The History Press, 2007

Synopsis

This biography concentrates exclusively on Woolf's close and inspirational female friendships with the key women in her life. Vanessa Curtis looks both at the effect of these relationships on her emotional life and the inspiration that each woman provided for the female protagonists in her fiction.

About this title

Review:

"If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure--the relationship so secret and private compared with relations to men."

"Vanessa Curtis's portrait of Woolf, her family, and her friends is quite compelling. What I found most distinctive is Curtis's fine appreciation of the emotional tissue that connected Woolf to the women who loved her.... Using diaries and letters, Curtis illuminates these varied relationships."

"Vanessa Curtis's portrait of Woolf, her family, and her friends is quite compelling. What I found most distinctive is Curtis's fine appreciation of the emotional tissue that connected Woolf to the women who loved her. . . Using diaries and letters, Curtis illuminates these varied relationships."
Lynn K. Talbot, Roanoke College, coauthor of Living at the Edge
"

From the Author:

I wrote 'Virginia Woolf's Women' because I could see that there was a lack of books concentrating specifically on the women in Woolf's life. The early period of Woolf's life, spent in the claustrophobic existence of Victorian patriarchal society, particularly interests me, and I wanted to convey something of the effect that her mother, sister and half-sister had on her entire life. The other women featured in the book are all hugely characterful, and all, in different ways, had a profound influence on Virginia Woolf. Although very different from one another, they were all loved by Woolf and, in their various ways, loved her back (albeit tolerantly, in some cases!). It was a particular challenge to find photographs and texts that have not been published widely before, and which I think illustrate the transformation of Virginia Stephen, nervous teenager, into the confident, humorous writer of genius that she grew into. I think that her friendships with the women!
I have researched, should be celebrated as an antidote to the age-old misconceptions of Woolf as a unsmiling depressive. She was capable of much laughter and enjoyment and women, in particular, were able to light the touchpaper, sit back - and enjoy the sparks.

About this edition

• Publisher: The History Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0750934069
• ISBN 13: 9780750934060
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280