GENIUS & INK EB

Virginia Woolf

• Publisher: TLS Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780008361884
• eBook ISBN: 9780008355739
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE

Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf?

In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper's defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars.

The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf's works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One's Own.

Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what's great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a "substitute for living" because she was "forbidden to scamper on the grass". Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.

Contents

1. Cover
2. About the TLS
3. Works by Virginia Woolf
4. Title Page
5. Copyright
6. Epigraph
8. 
   Preface
9. Introduction
10. Frontispiece
11. 
    Charlotte Brontë
12. Hours in a Library
13. George Eliot
14. The Letters of Henry James
15. John Evelyn
16. On Re-reading Novels
17. How it Strikes a Contemporary
18. Montaigne
19. Joseph Conrad
20. Notes on an Elizabethan Play
21. Thomas Hardy’s Novels
22. Fanny Burney’s Half-Sister
23. Aurora Leigh
24. The Captain’s Death Bed
25. 
    A Note on the Text
26. 
    About the Author
27. Enjoyed the book?
28. Also from TLS Books
29. About the Publisher

Table of contents

• About the TLS
• Works by Virginia Woolf
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Frontispiece
• Charlotte Brontë
• Hours in a Library
• George Eliot
• The Letters of Henry James
• John Evelyn
• On Re-reading Novels
• How it Strikes a Contemporary
• Montaigne
• Joseph Conrad
• Notes on an Elizabethan Play
• Thomas Hardy’s Novels
• Fanny Burney’s Half-Sister
• Aurora Leigh
• The Captain’s Death Bed
• A Note on the Text
• About the Author
• Enjoyed the book?
• Also from TLS Books
• About the Publisher