"Unbeknown to many, Virginia Woolf spent the first twenty years of her career writing essays and book reviews. So well-known is Woolf for her fiction that her readers may easily overlook the fact that she is the author of over five hundred works of nonfiction, and that for nearly half of her writing career Woolf was primarily a book reviewer and essayist. Virginia Woolf and the Essay is one of the first critical studies of these essays and reviews. The collection begins with an introduction that surveys the historical reception of Woolf's essays, and then sketches out a methodological study of these essays by placing them within historical, literary historical, reader-oriented, generic, and feminist contexts."--Jacket.