I have complicated feelings about this one! This is a gossipy, fun, frustrating, engaging, and readable book that doesn't entirely live up to the promise of its title. Gill tells us she is going to explore the life of Virginia Woolf by looking at the women in her life -- her ancestors, her immediate family, her friends, and her contemporaries -- but the women we hear the most about are the most flamboyant and racy, we end up hearing nearly as much about the men in Woolf's life, and there are big holes in exploring influences that seem more germane to Woolf's life in preference for a good anecdote or sensational story.

Gill starts way back in Woolf's family tree with her great-great grandparents, a French aristocrat living in colonial northern India and his beautiful Franco-Indian wife. Gill gets a lot of mileage out of the inherited beauty of the de L'etang / Pattle / Jackson / Stephen family, and dwells a little too much on racially-based dissection of family portraits for evidence of Indian ancestry. She dips a little into the French and English colonial oppression of India but, for the most part, appears to be pretty wowed by anyone who has an aristocratic background. Still, there are some great stories here and a pattern of extremely strong women and weak, flawed, and forgettable husbands, at least the way Gill tells it. There is a lot of living India for France and England, starting over, and (not unusual for the time) working to secure upwardly mobile marriages for all these beautiful daughters.

A great deal of time is given to "Pattledom" -- the artistic and literary home of Virginia Woolf's great aunts, particularly Julia Cameron, who is well known for her artistic photographic portraits of friends and family, including Woolf's mother, Julia Jackson and her children. Julia Cameron's sister, Maria Jackson, however, is hardly delved into at all, despite her living for years in the home with Virginia Woolf and her having probably a great deal to do with the psychology of Woolf's mother. Julia Jackson Duckworth Stephen is a fascinating character and she is given a lot of book time, although she is difficult to pin down. She marries for love, loses her husband to a sudden illness when she has three small children, takes care of business as a single mother, known for her philanthropy and self-sacrifice, and then, to the surprise of everyone, marries the grumpy, old, and pretty poor (but very devoted) Leslie Stephen and starts a new family, including Virginia, her sister Vanessa, and her two brothers.

And, of course, there is Bloomsbury. After the untimely death of their mother and the long-awaited/feared death of their father, the Stephen siblings drew a non-conforming, artistic, gay, literary, sexual, snobby, and ever-growing crowd of (mostly male) friends and lovers. Virginia Woolf, however, was always a little outside of this group -- because of her mental health, her caustic wit, her Jewish husband, and, probably most of all, the dramatic and overwhelming orbit of beloved older sister, Vanessa Bell. I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of Bloomsbury, but it is fascinating and covered here in great detail, but with much more of an emphasis on Vanessa than Virginia.

Gill's delight in anecdotes, armchair psychology, speculation, and cutesy phrasing means that she frequently appears to mock or belittle issues of mental health, sexual abuse, and familial dysfunction. She then tries to right that boat by overcompensating with preachy judgment on the topics that she had earlier rolled into a delightful turn of phrase. This gets a little old. I also don't see how you can have a subject like Woolf, who is such a beautiful, prolific, and revealing writer, and quote so little from her books, letters, and diaries. The final slim chapter and epilogue, which talk about Virginia Woolf's marriage and her relationship with her niece and nephews, shows a hard-working, brilliant woman in a love-filled marriage of two flawed but well-matched people, who has a playful, insightful, and close relationship with her family members. You would not think this was the case from the flippant discussions of "madness" and intimate speculation on Woolf's sexuality. Gill also shoehorns in references to her own other biographies willy nilly, regardless of their relationship to Woolf (get ready for a lot of references to Agatha Christie, Queen Victoria, and Florence Nightingale). And she cites movies like they are academic works!

I will admit, I still loved reading this book. I am not above enjoying some sexy gossip, family skeletons, and hidden affairs. This is super readable and gives a very specific and flawed, but engaging, view on Woolf's world. Honestly, even if you don't like Virginia Woolf, lovers of British history, Bloomsbury in general, or popular biography may get a thrill from this one. ( )

I’ve read two or three biographies of Virginia Woolf, but this one went at telling her story from a very different angle than usual. Gill goes back in time, and tells us about Woolf’s female predecessors. The women aren’t just her foremothers; Gill includes Anne Thackeray Ritchie, who while not well known now showed Woolf that a woman could be a successful writer, her siblings including half –sister Laura, who got called an ‘idiot’ and was put away in an asylum when she was in her 20s. Of course, her family also included men. Most were good, but her two half-brothers were nasty characters who sexually abused both Virginia and her sister Vanessa- and possibly Laura and Stella. It’s odd that Gill stresses that it was the women who shaped Woolf’s life, when she and her siblings (and her mother, Julia) were shaped very strongly by the male-dominated times in general and their family in particular. Later, Woolf became part of the influential (in intellectual terms) Bloomsbury group. This group was composed of mainly gay and bi men who had little use for women, but changed their minds when it came to Virginia, and her sister Vanessa, who both married into the group. Woolf and her sister transformed the group; the group transformed the women. It was here that Woolf found her literary voice.

Gill has a great enthusiasm for her subject. She sometimes writes in a breathless manner, as if she were a teenager writing about her heartthrob. It’s a somewhat odd choice of style, given how much scholarly research she put into the book, but it works. At times it’s like listening in on gossip; the Bloomsbury group seems to have put as much energy into their sex lives as they did into their art; a discussion of the grooming and marriage of Woolf’s niece to the former lover of the girl’s father is had. The only thing I found annoying was the author’s habit of jumping around in time- it made it even more difficult to sort out the large cast of characters. Four stars. ( )

Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World by Gillian Gill is a biography of Virginia Woolf and her forebearers. Gill, who holds a Ph.D. in modern French literature from Cambridge University, has taught at Northeastern, Wellesley, Yale, and Harvard. She is the author of We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals; Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale; Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries; and Mary Baker Eddy.

There are plenty of biographies of Virginia (née Stephen)Woolf as well as her collected letters and diaries. Her life still does hold a few mysteries, one very large aspect of her life, is covered in detail by Gill but not universally agreed on by Woolf scholars. Gill's work, however, is almost a prequel of Woolf. She goes back several generations to explore her French and Indian family background.

In digging deeper into Woolf's past, Gill explores the topic of mental illness in the Stephens lineage which affected many of Virginia's generation. Her Sister Vanessa was susceptible to breakdowns, another sister was institutionalized, and both her brothers showed signs of Cyclothymia. Although most of us would consider the middle of the 20th century as modern times, it is surprising how little was known about mental illness and its treatment.

Another aspect that is covered in this book is sexuality especially among those of the Bloomsbury Group and the upper levels of society. Homosexuality was more common than one would expect and there were more than a few show marriages meant to hide the crime of homosexuality. Although well known in the upper circles, it remained a secret from the public. Private matters were deemed to remain private. Gill ties in another term that was prevalent in England at the time and expands on it: homosocially. Segregation by sex was very common and began in early schooling and lasted through the university experience. The use of Jacob's Room is used to explain some of the concepts when Jacob decides to go swimming (skinny dipping) and to sun-dry afterward -- nudity among men was commonplace and although did not mean homosexuality, it may have encouraged it in some.

Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World is a well researched and very well documented work of the Stephens and Jackson (maternal) families. It examines the society that Virginia Woolf was raised in and lived as well as her personal conflicts. The Victorian society that shaped her early years. Her lack of formal education, but reading from a large family library. Her promiscuous friends and her abstinence. It is also one of the few biographies where Woolf's mental illness is not sensationalized and her relationship with Vita Sackville-West is not made a center point of her life. Virginia Woolf's life in many ways has strong ties to her ancestry and to the historical setting in which she lived. Gill does an outstanding job of providing a more complete picture of one of England's greatest 20th-century writers. ( )