Congenial Spirits brings together the finest and most enjoyable of Virginia Woolf's letters in a single volume. It is a marvellous collection - spontaneous, witty, often flirtatious and powerfully moving. Whether bemoaning some domestic travail, commenting publicly on the state of the nation, or taking up her pen, inspired, to discuss cultural, artistic or personal concerns, Virginia Woolf is one of the great correspondents. This volume displays not only Woolf's courage and brilliance, her generosity and love of gossip, but also her genius for close and enduring friendship.
Recommend this book
Add your recommendation
Only registered users can recommend books. Please use the buttons below to either create a new account, or sign-in to an existing account.
About her letters there can be no division: they are among the best ever written in the English language - Sunday Telegraph
Letters as well selected as these, and as brilliant (though Woolf herself saw them as 'mere tossing of omelettes') close the gap between the author and the private person - The Times
Her curiosity about people and words is passionate and unending - Guardian
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. In 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf. Her first novel The Voyage Out was published in 1915, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press. The majority of Virginia Woolf's work was first published by The Hogarth Press, and these original texts are now available, together with her selected letters and diaries, from Vintage Classics, which belongs to the publishing group that Hogarth became part of in 1987. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. On 28 March 1941, a few months before the publication of her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide.
