Virginia Woolf Biography

Hello Everyone,

Not sure if this board is still active. I'm reading Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee and having a devil of a time with it. Has anyone else read it?

Has anyone else read Virginia Woolf's diaries?

Yeh, I've read it. What sort of problems are you having with it? I found it lucid and readable...

And I've read the extracts from VW's diaries marketed as "A Writer's Diary" but not the whole thing.

I think it's the amount of information she packs in, but now that I've gotten to Virginia's childhood, the book is evening out. I've made a decision to read Woolf's diaries after I finish the Lee biography, I'm quite excited.

Oh - all the background stuff about the families is always the hardest bit in any bio as it feels so dense, and you feel like you have to remember it all and take it all in... so yes, should get a bit easier then!

I'd recommend trying the Writer's Diary first as that's quite a lot of the most interesting bits. From what I recall about the diaries from other books i've read, a lot of them are about the other Bloomsbury people - so either you'll get bored and confused by them if you don't know them ... OR you'll get completely obsessed and start feverishly collecting books on all of them, too! Just to warn you...!