Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir

Front Cover
Bloomsbury Academic, Mar 15, 2007 - Biography & Autobiography - 192 pages

Holtby gives us Woolf the critic, the essayist and the experimental novelist in a critical memoir which is of particular interest as the work of one intelligent, though very different, novelist commenting on another. Holtby's careful reading of Woolf's work is set in the context of the debate between modernist and traditional writing in the 1920s and 1930s. Although Holtby greatly admires Woolf's art, she considers its limitations as an elite form that ignores the material conditions of everyday life and the consequent social responsibility expected of the novel. Choosing to write about Woolf as 'the author whose art seemed most of all removed from anything I could ever attempt, and whose experience was most alien to my own,' Holtby has written a candid appreciation of the complex, groundbreaking work of a contemporary writer at the height of her career.
Winifred Holtby was a novelist, journalist and social reformer, who campaigned for the causes of peace and sexual and racial equality. Her most famous work is the novel South Riding, published posthumously in 1936. She died in 1935.

From inside the book

 

Contents

THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING VIRGINIA STEPHEN
9
THE UNCOMMON READER
37
THE VOYAGE OUT
61
Copyright

7 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

action adventure Ambrose artist beauty beneath Bennett Betty Flanders characters Clara Clarissa comedy contemporary criticism D. H. Lawrence Dalloway death drawing-room Durrant Edwardians Elizabethan English essay experience external feel Florinda flowers Georgian girl Helen Hogarth Press Holtby Holtby's human imagination intellectual Jacob's Room Jane Austen John Hirst Katharine Hilbery Kew Gardens lady Leonard Woolf Letters of Virginia light Lighthouse Lily Briscoe literary literature living London look married mind Monday or Tuesday morality never Night and Day novel novelist Orlando party perhaps Peter Walsh picture play poem poet poetry political prose Rachel Vinrace Ralph Ramsay readers reality Rhoda Room of One's S. S. Koteliansky seems sense Shakespeare sketches society sound Stephen story strange Terence things thought trees true truth unity Virginia Woolf vision Voyage Waves window Winifred Holtby woman women words write young

About the author (2007)

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was a novelist, journalist and social reformer, who campaigned for the causes of peace and feminism, and for the improvement of the working conditions of black workers in South Africa. She was a great friend of Vera Brittain who wrote a tribute to her in "Testament of Friendship." Holtby's most famous, and lasting, work is her novel, "South Riding," published posthumously in 1936.

Bibliographic information

TitleVirginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir
AuthorWinifred Holtby
PublisherBloomsbury Academic, 2007
ISBN0826494439, 9780826494436
Length192 pages
Subjects › 

Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan