Virginia Woolf: An Illustrated Anthology

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), the central figure among the authors and painters known as the Bloomsbury Group, is numbered among the most original writers of the twentieth century, recognized especially for her beautifully crafted novels, including To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1929) and The Waves (1931), and her influential feminist essays, in particular A Room of One's Own (1929).

Her work as both critic and novelist was exceptional and important: technically brilliant, she applied innovative literary methods and conveyed an intensity of feeling and particular insights into women's issues that remain relevant today.

In 1912 she married the author and social reformer Leonard Woolf, living with him partly in Sussex, to which she transplanted the Bloomsbury artistic and literary milieu. In 1917 they founded the influential Hogarth Press, and for thirty years they worked in close collaboration, each supporting the other through her intermittent bouts of mental illness, until an acute attack of depression, exacerbated by the anxieties of the Second World War, led her to commit suicide by drowning.

This elegant anthology has been compiled by Jane Dunn, author of A Very Close Conspiracy (on the relationship of Virginia Woolf and her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell), and contains extracts from Virginia Woolf's novels and other works, her letters and diaries, as well as descriptive accounts and criticism by those associated with her.

These are illustrated throughout, mostly in color, by a superb array of paintings and photographs.