Virginia Woolf: Bloomsbury & Beyond (H Books) Book

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group. This new biography approaches her from a very personal angle: 'I first came across Virginia Woolf's novels as a schoolboy aged 16 in 1942, the year after her self-inflicted death by drowning', writes Author Anthony Curtis. 'I read "Jacob's Room", "To the Lighthouse", "Mrs. Dalloway", "The Waves", all in our school library put there by a woman teacher who was a great admirer. I discussed them with her and arrived at a conception of The Modern Novel in which narrative is filtered through inner consciousness of characters. Then I read the novelists Virginia Woolf was reacting against: Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, and pondered the limitations of Woolf's techniques against their linear approach to narrative and accumulation of externally observed detail. The critical debate between the 'traditional' and "modern" approach to writing fiction has exercised me ever since. Which is more "real"?'Read More