Thursday 19 February 2009

The Essays of Virginia Woolf: Volume 5


What a glorious day. I now have my copy of the recently published fifth volume of The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932, edited by Stuart N. Clarke. I'm not alone in thinking Woolf one of the best essayists (as well as novelists) of the twentieth century and while many of these pieces have previously appeared in her Common Reader: Second Series collection, or in other anthologies, I'm still pretty excited to add this 700 page tome to my shelves. As Clarke notes in his introduction, "The essays fertilised the fiction, and vice versa" (his emphasis) and he's noted the parallels in the footnotes. Woolf was writing The Waves and Flush during this period and if I ever get around to starting my 2009 resolution of re-reading her novels in chronological order, I will definitely be dipping into a similar selection of her essays alongside the fiction.
You can hear a radio interview with Clarke here (scroll down a bit).

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