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A review by ohnoflora
A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf by Virginia Woolf
5.0
I found this book very upsetting. Yes it is a fascinating document of a writer documenting, questioning, interrogating what it is to be a writer - and what it is to be a reader. But it is also a document of a self - a self that is not always happy, a self that second guesses, a self that struggles with illness and identity and, eventually, life: a self that questions what it is to BE.
The entries for 1940 in particular are heart rending: another terrible war with no end in sight, the very real possibility of invasion, destruction and death, the banality of wartime living, the constant air raids, the fear. And then it was over - and what a last sentence - but for what an awful reason.
Edited to add: Contrary to Katherine Mansfield's Journal (also published by Persephone), the editing by Leondard Woolf did not feel intrusive. He justifies his decisions in the introduction and they seem fair.
Unlike John Middleton Murray (Mansfield's husband, who edited her Journal), Leonard Woolf also had a clear purpose: to bring together all entries to do with V's thoughts on writing and reading and, thereby, to show that she was a serious writer deserving of her place in the canon. At the time her literary standing was on the ebb. The editing felt loving and truthful - which JMM's did not.
The entries for 1940 in particular are heart rending: another terrible war with no end in sight, the very real possibility of invasion, destruction and death, the banality of wartime living, the constant air raids, the fear. And then it was over - and what a last sentence - but for what an awful reason.
Edited to add: Contrary to Katherine Mansfield's Journal (also published by Persephone), the editing by Leondard Woolf did not feel intrusive. He justifies his decisions in the introduction and they seem fair.
Unlike John Middleton Murray (Mansfield's husband, who edited her Journal), Leonard Woolf also had a clear purpose: to bring together all entries to do with V's thoughts on writing and reading and, thereby, to show that she was a serious writer deserving of her place in the canon. At the time her literary standing was on the ebb. The editing felt loving and truthful - which JMM's did not.