Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times. Her book moves freely between a richly detailed life-story and new attempts to understand crucial questions - the impact of her childhood, the cause and nature of her madness and suicide, the trut[...]

"A majestic literary biography, a truly new, surprisingly fresh portrait. --

Newsday

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

National Book Critics Circle Award finalist

"A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It redisco[...]

This book, first published in 1977, is not about Bloomsbury, lesbianism, madness or suicide, but is a much-needed introduction to Virginia Woolfa (TM)s nine novels, written in the hope of turning attention back from the life to the fictional work. Its clarity and insights will make this book invalua[...]

Compares the relation of biography to fiction and history and explores several writers' lives in connection with their works. This book incorporates different ways in which biographies, memoirs, diaries and autobiographies can be discussed.[...]

The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes at a small provincial secondary school sets in train a series of events that will have a profound effect on his life, and that of his new friend Francois Seurel. It is Seurel who recalls the impact of le grand Meaulnes, disruptive and charismatic, on his schoolmates,[...]