Virginia Woolf: A Biography

Description

'He writes with candour, modesty and wit, and gives the best and most humorously plausible account of Bloomsbury I have ever read' - John Bayley Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. As the nephew of Virginia Woolf, Quentin Bell enjoyed an initimacy with his subject granted to few biographers. Originally published in two volumes in 1972, his acclaimed biography describes Virginia Woolf's family and childhood; her earliest writings; the formation of the Bloomsbury Group; her marriage to Leonard Woolf; the mental breakdown of the years 1912-15; the origins and growth of the Hogarth Press; her friendships with T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and Vita Sackvill-West; her struggles to write The Waves and The Years; and the political and personal distresses of her last decade. Compelling, moving and entertaining, Quentin Bell's biography was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. It is a fitting tribute to a remarkable and complex woman, one of the greatest writers of the century.

Quentin Bell, the younger son of Vanessa and Clive Bell, was born in 1910. He was a painter, sculptor, potter, author and art critic, and was Professor of Fine Art at the University of Leeds; Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford; and Professor of the History of Theory of Art at Sussex. His books include On Human Finery, Ruskin, Bloomsbury and the highly praised two-voulme Virginia Woolf- A Biography which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year. He lived most of his later life in Sussex, where he died in December 1996, age 86.

A model of the biographer's art, combining as it does diligent research, abundant quotations and a judicious and self-effacing narrative written in attractive and readable prose... One of the really great biographies of recent times -- Ray Monk * Sunday Telegraph * A work of art, evoking by his frankness and outstanding skill the vivid personality that cast a spell upon almost everyone lucky enough to know her -- Raymond Mortimer Professor Bell is absolute master of his material. He brings his subject to life with such honesty that one almost forgets that she wrote some of the great important novels of the period -- Anthony Curtis Outstanding..romantic, enthralling, even hilarious -- Margaret Lane Will rank among the great lives -- Arthur Calder-Marshall