Virginia Woolf

24 featured booksVirginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ([Source][1].) [Comment from Ursula Le Guin on The Guardian][2]: > You can't write science fiction well if you haven't read it, though not all who try to write it know this. But nor can you write it well if you haven't read anything else. Genre is a rich dialect, in which you can say certain things in a particularly satisfying way, but if it gives up connection with the general literary language it becomes a jargon, meaningful only to an ingroup. Useful models may be found quite outside the genre. I learned a lot from reading the ever-subversive Virginia Woolf. > I was 17 when I read [Orlando][3]. It was half-revelation, half-confusion to me at that age, but one thing was clear: that she imagined a society vastly different from our own, an exotic world, and brought it dramatically alive. I'm thinking of the Elizabethan scenes, the winter when the Thames froze over. Reading, I was there, saw the bonfires blazing in the ice, felt the marvellous strangeness of that moment 500 years ago – the authentic thrill of being taken absolutely elsewhere. > How did she do it? By precise, specific descriptive details, not heaped up and not explained: a vivid, telling imagery, highly selected, encouraging the reader's imagination to fill out the picture and see it luminous, complete. > In [Flush][4], Woolf gets inside a dog's mind, that is, a non-human brain, an alien mentality – very science-fictional if you look at it that way. Again what I learned was the power of accurate, vivid, highly selected detail. I imagine Woolf looking down at the dog asleep beside the ratty armchair she wrote in and thinking what are your dreams? and listening . . . sniffing the wind . . . after the rabbit, out on the hills, in the dog's timeless world. > Useful stuff, for those who like to see through eyes other than our own. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf [2]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice [3]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39360W/Orlando [4]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL39320W/Flush

Search this author Open first work

OL19450A

Overview

Catalog identity and bibliographic footprint for this author.

24 representative editions

Author pages in Bookitis are intended to show only works actually attributed to the author and a representative edition for each of those works.

Catalog identity

How this author appears inside the active Bookitis catalog.

Display name
Virginia Woolf
Personal name
Virginia Woolf
Source identifier
OL19450A

Featured books

Representative editions for works actually authored by this person.

Works in catalog

Quick navigation into the work-level grouping pages behind the featured books.

A Room of One's Own
Representative edition published 2025
Open Work
To the Lighthouse
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
To the Lighthouse
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
On Being Ill
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
To the Lighthouse
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
To the Lighthouse
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Monday or Tuesday (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Estuche Virginia Woolf
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Estuche Virginia Woolf
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Una societat
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Una habitación propia
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Una habitación propia
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Virginia Woolf
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
L'habitació d'en Jacob
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Diary of Virginia Woolf - V.4 1931-35
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Flush
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Three guineas
Representative edition published 2023
Open Work
Mrs Dalloway
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work
Street Haunting
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work
Diari d'una escriptora
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work
Talks with Tolstoi
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work
Los años
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work
Entre els actes
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work
Primeros diarios
Representative edition published 2022
Open Work