andthyme's review against another edition
5.0
Really, truly extraordinary. One of the best biographies I've ever read, certainly at least as good as Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes (my previous favourite). I rather suspect it's instilled a lifelong love of Woolf in me - I had previously only read Orlando, but am currently also reading Mrs Dalloway and planning on continuing through the body of work. Highly, highly recommended.
brogan7's review against another edition
Very intensely informational book, lots of family members and extended family members. Although interesting, it's almost too much detail.
One to come back to...
One to come back to...
kahale's review
3.0
This comprehensive biography shows all the influences of her life on Virginia's writings. It was hard to read all at one time.
lora_h's review
5.0
I'm so blown away by this biography, all I can say is, go read it. Now. Take my copy. No, go get your own. This is a book I'll hang onto.
fluentinsilence's review against another edition
5.0
"Virginia Woolf's story is reformulated by each generation. She takes on the shape of difficult modernist preoccupied with questions of form, or comedian of manners, or neurotic highbrow aesthete, or inventive fantasist, or pernicious snob, or Marxist feminist, or historian of women's lives, or victim of abuse, or lesbian heroine, or cultural analyst, depending on who's reading her, and when, and in what context." (p. 769)
meer: http://winterlief.blogspot.nl/2012/10/virginia-woolf-een-biografie-deel-i.html
meer: http://winterlief.blogspot.nl/2012/10/virginia-woolf-een-biografie-deel-i.html
sophie_alice's review against another edition
4.0
(7.5) - read for uni
This was the perfect level of depth for a biography; engaging and informative enough to fill nine hundred pages without becoming too dry.
I like how she isn't sugarcoated, and also that there wasn't excessive focus placed upon her death yet it was still pretty horrible to read.
This was the perfect level of depth for a biography; engaging and informative enough to fill nine hundred pages without becoming too dry.
I like how she isn't sugarcoated, and also that there wasn't excessive focus placed upon her death yet it was still pretty horrible to read.
nwhyte's review
5.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2920196.html
Lee's biography of Woolf was published in 1996, and I see there have been a couple more since; but this is pretty comprehensive, covering 59 years in 770 pages. Woolf bitterly regretted not having had a formal education, but maybe her more chaotic intellectual upbringing was a necessary precursor for her genius to take the shape that it did. Certainly being brought up with and mixing with writers gave her a keen understanding for the writer's life. Lee does a really good job of mapping the literary interactions between Woolf and her family, friends and lovers, from the day she was born to the day she died. I learned a lot about the micro-geography of Bloomsbury and its satellite territories, and it was all very interesting.
Lee devotes appropriate but not obsessional attention to Virginia's half-brother's sexual abuse of her and her sister; she rightly puts more time into elucidating Woolf's experience of mental illness, which hit her repeatedly as an adult and prompted her suicide at the fear of yet another debilitating breakdown. I feel a lot of Woolf's work is translucently teetering on the edge of experience, and this was a good explanation of how that came to be. Though of course, a lot of other people have similar experiences and do not achieve the same fame; it doesn't explain how she became a great writer, but it does I think help explain why she became the great writer that she did.
My one minor disappointment with Lee's book is that I didn't feel Woolf's feminism was really put into context, apart from her fleeting engagement with the suffragettes and her later entanglement with Dame Ethel Smyth. Did she interact with or influence other feminist writings of the day? Were her friends and lovers (other than Ethel Smyth) also feminists? She is portrayed here as rather a lone voice in the wilderness.
However, otherwise this was a very satisfying read about someone I had wished I knew more about, and whose books I will now read with greater understanding and even more enthusiasm.
Lee's biography of Woolf was published in 1996, and I see there have been a couple more since; but this is pretty comprehensive, covering 59 years in 770 pages. Woolf bitterly regretted not having had a formal education, but maybe her more chaotic intellectual upbringing was a necessary precursor for her genius to take the shape that it did. Certainly being brought up with and mixing with writers gave her a keen understanding for the writer's life. Lee does a really good job of mapping the literary interactions between Woolf and her family, friends and lovers, from the day she was born to the day she died. I learned a lot about the micro-geography of Bloomsbury and its satellite territories, and it was all very interesting.
Lee devotes appropriate but not obsessional attention to Virginia's half-brother's sexual abuse of her and her sister; she rightly puts more time into elucidating Woolf's experience of mental illness, which hit her repeatedly as an adult and prompted her suicide at the fear of yet another debilitating breakdown. I feel a lot of Woolf's work is translucently teetering on the edge of experience, and this was a good explanation of how that came to be. Though of course, a lot of other people have similar experiences and do not achieve the same fame; it doesn't explain how she became a great writer, but it does I think help explain why she became the great writer that she did.
My one minor disappointment with Lee's book is that I didn't feel Woolf's feminism was really put into context, apart from her fleeting engagement with the suffragettes and her later entanglement with Dame Ethel Smyth. Did she interact with or influence other feminist writings of the day? Were her friends and lovers (other than Ethel Smyth) also feminists? She is portrayed here as rather a lone voice in the wilderness.
However, otherwise this was a very satisfying read about someone I had wished I knew more about, and whose books I will now read with greater understanding and even more enthusiasm.
bookswithpetra's review against another edition
4.0
Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf is definitely one of the best biographies I have ever read. It is definitely one to read if you are intrigued by Woolf and want to know more about her life but as it is so dense, I don't think that person who isn't that interested at Virginia Woolf and her work wouldn't really enjoy it. Still, as I said, I truly think that this biography is a work of art and I learned so much while reading it. It was an experience; saddening, exciting and tiresome at the same time.
eheslosz's review
5.0
I felt a sad sense of closure as I finally finished this book. I've had it on the go for a long time, reading a chapter before bed every now and then, and it brought me comfort in many moments throughout the last months. This was very well researched, and both academically precise – saturated with quotation and direct sources – and yet also so well written and compelling to read.
Somehow Hermione Lee manages to mould a beautifully coherent structure out of such a complex life with so much conflicting material. There were some particularly poignant moments at the ends of some chapters which tied together passages from Virginia Woolf's novels with moments of her life pertinent to that moment of the biography, where I genuinely just thought, wow, Hermione Lee is so good at this. But at the same time this biography takes care not to overly reduce Woolf's novels to a reflection of her personal life story.
Lee does not gloss over some of the eugenics and racism and classism of Virginia Woolf and her contemporaries, and handles it quite well, though I think still not critically enough for me. Overall the "life" Lee constructs of Virginia Woolf is thoughtful and endearing but not sappy hagiography, and has such an impressive balance and conciseness. I definitely plan to read some of her other biographies (perhaps Willa Cather or Edith Wharton) at some point. This is certainly the best non-fiction book I have read this year.
Somehow Hermione Lee manages to mould a beautifully coherent structure out of such a complex life with so much conflicting material. There were some particularly poignant moments at the ends of some chapters which tied together passages from Virginia Woolf's novels with moments of her life pertinent to that moment of the biography, where I genuinely just thought, wow, Hermione Lee is so good at this. But at the same time this biography takes care not to overly reduce Woolf's novels to a reflection of her personal life story.
Lee does not gloss over some of the eugenics and racism and classism of Virginia Woolf and her contemporaries, and handles it quite well, though I think still not critically enough for me. Overall the "life" Lee constructs of Virginia Woolf is thoughtful and endearing but not sappy hagiography, and has such an impressive balance and conciseness. I definitely plan to read some of her other biographies (perhaps Willa Cather or Edith Wharton) at some point. This is certainly the best non-fiction book I have read this year.