Virginia Woolf
By: James King
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Norton
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 699
ISBN-13: 9780393037487
Subjects: Biographies; Biographie; English Novelists; Romanciers anglais; Biography
Description: Virginia Woolf is one of the foremost writers of this century, yet surprisingly this biography is the first to fully explore the relationship between her troubled life and her novels, essays, book reviews, letters, and diaries - celebrated works that made her such a noted literary figure. All her life Woolf struggled with sadness that threatened to overwhelm and destroy her. In many ways her writings were attempts to counteract these powerful feelings and to grasp the healing forces of life. This was her central reason for writing: to investigate and curb her fascination with death and, at the same time, to capture the vitality of existence. The paradox was that such affirmation inevitably brought her back to the subjects she knew best: the destructiveness of men, the burdens of the past, and the fragility of life. In this absorbing biography James King examines how the raw material of Woolf's daily existence was transformed into art, and he pays close attention to her search for forms of writing that encompass a new feminist aesthetic. Virginia Woolf sheds new light on this daring, impetuous, tormented artist, who strove relentlessly to find the right words to capture life's insubstantiality and its vibrancy.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 663-673) and index.