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Rating: 
Summary: A Nephew's Perspective
Review: Almost sixty years after Virginia Woolf's death, her image is chrystalized in numerous bodies of boigraphical works. Most writers who commemorate Woolf must write as an onlooker. Quentin Bell is unlike most biographers. Woolf was his aunt. Bell is able to capture the smallest peculiarity in Woolf's character. She was a central personality in his life. His childhood memories of her are particularly strong. He remembers that she was a wonderful as a child's companion. She understood the young better than any other adult. Bell says that Woolf was a first-rate story teller. She could frighten children, even if the story was not terribly scary. THe only shortcoming of Bell's biography is that it has no criticism of Woolf's writings. Bell's work is simply a reccolection. However, it is an interesting read and a lovely memior.
Rating: 
Summary: A Most Interesting Perspective
Review: An amazing and unique look at the life of Virginia Woolf, through the thoughts and studies of her own nephew--Quentin Bell. Filled with history, quotes, parts of letters and diary entries, this makes a wonderful and educational read. A peek into the society of Bloomsbury and beyond. This biography follows Virginia and all who were close to her through turbulent times and the happiness and stress of new households.
Rating:
Summary: A definitive source...
Review: I read VIRGINIA WOLFE: A BIOGRAPHY by Quentin Bell after I had read several other books about Wolfe. I was pleased to discover that Bell included some of the more unsavory aspects of Woolfe's life even though he was a blood relative and wrote his book in an age that frowned on revealing "dirty" family secrets. I am referring to the presumed incestuous behavior of Woolfe's brothers towards Virginia and Vanessa. Quentin Bell was the son of Virginia's sister the artist Venessa Bell. Virginia and Vanessa were the daughters of the very prominent English Victorian Leslie Stephen. Stephen married Virginia's mother Julia after her first husband Herbert Duckworth died. The brothers accused of incest were sons from the first marriage and much older than Virginia who was the next to the youngest child of Julia and Leslie. Much has been written about the end of Virgina's life, how she placed several heavy stones in her pockets and walked into the river Ouse near her home and drowned herself in the early 1940s. As recently as last week on Garrison Keilior's "Writer's Almanack" on NPR on the anniversary of her birth this event was mentioned again as if it was the only thing she ever did of interest. But Virginia did not take her life easily. She had survived some horrific events including the death of her beloved brother Thoby--her closest sibling, and the deaths of many other loved persons during WWI, as well as the death of Lytton Strachey her best friend. Moreover, at the time of her death, her London home in Bloomsbury had been bombed and Hitler was threatening to invade England. Virginia's husband Leonard was Jewish and they were both aware of what Hitler was doing to the Jews. The most wonderful aspect of Bell's book is that he tells the complete story of Virgina's life--how she coped with sorrow and used her life experiences to frame her art. She was probably the most original writer of the 20th Century, and much of the glory that went to James Joyce should have gone to her. At the very least, she was his equal. She wrote in a 'stream of consciousness subjective voice' before James, but she wrote in an era when women writers found it difficult to become published. In fact, Virginia and Leonard started their own publishing press to deal with this deficiency. Even so, Virginia's work remained relatively obscure until it was "discovered" during the women's movement of the 1960's. This is an illuminating, sad, and reflective book written by a man who knew and loved her. If you want to know more about Virginia Wolfe this is the place to begin.
Rating: 
Summary: Distance and Intimacy
Review: It is perhaps a truism that Virginia Woolf's life has overshadowed her fiction, or at least stands a good chance of doing so. Much has been made lately of the fact that we almost cannot read Woolf without seeing her works through the lens of her life. That said, there is something interesting in the fact that she has become such a household name; that her personality DOES compete with her oeuvre for attention. People are fascinated by Virginia Woolf, for various reasons. Quentin Bell's biography is, I think, generally regarded as the classic work on Woolf's life. It is an incredible achievement, and the fact that Mr. Bell is Virginia Woolf's nephew makes it all the more fascinating and compelling. When he chooses to, he brings an intimacy to his subject that the reader knows is genuine. His remarks regarding his aunt's personality, her voice and looks, are vivid because of their first-handedness. That Bell's biography is not a family "tell-all" is, then, nothing short of astonishing, and is a tribute to Mr. Bell's intelligence and good sense. The Stephens family certainly has enough material in their closets to make quite an interesting read - and Mr. Bell does not skip over potentially "embarrassing" aspects of Virginia's, Leonard's or his mother Vanessa's lives. Nor does he present them in the sensationalist manner that a lesser writer might have scooped to. He is unfailingly honest; he is also respectful and fair. The deep love he has for his subject is evident; however it does not overwhelm the work. The biography is more a piece of scholarship than a memoir. However it is this delicious mean that makes "Virginia Woolf" such a compelling and interesting work. It does not indulge in literary criticism intentionally, however knowing the state of Woolf's life and mind at the time she was writing various novels cannot help but inform a reading of them. That said, it is not for the purpose of examining his aunt's books that Quentin Bell seeks to chronicle her life, I think. Rather, it is the force of Woolf's own personality; her intelligence and the world she moved in (for there is no better place to begin a study of the Modernist writers in general and the Bloomsbury Folk in particular than Bell's books). Besides being perhaps the most complete and evenly tempered account of Woolf's life, Quentin Bell's biography is well written, well documented and, as the best biographies should, puts us as close as we can perhaps get to the subject. We may not feel at the end that we "know" Virginia Woolf - what a ridiculous assumption to make under any circumstance! - but we have been in the presence of one who did, and who has allowed himself to step back far enough to see her and her life objectively. It is this simultaneous distance and intimacy that gives "Virginia Woolf" its authority and it's heart.
Rating:
Summary: Distance and Intimacy
Review: It is perhaps a truism that Virginia Woolf's life has overshadowed her fiction, or at least stands a good chance of doing so. Much has been made lately of the fact that we almost cannot read Woolf without seeing her works through the lens of her life. That said, there is something interesting in the fact that she has become such a household name; that her personality DOES compete with her oeuvre for attention. People are fascinated by Virginia Woolf, for various reasons. Quentin Bell's biography is, I think, generally regarded as the classic work on Woolf's life. It is an incredible achievement, and the fact that Mr. Bell is Virginia Woolf's nephew makes it all the more fascinating and compelling. When he chooses to, he brings an intimacy to his subject that the reader knows is genuine. His remarks regarding his aunt's personality, her voice and looks, are vivid because of their first-handedness. That Bell's biography is not a family "tell-all" is, then, nothing short of astonishing, and is a tribute to Mr. Bell's intelligence and good sense. The Stephens family certainly has enough material in their closets to make quite an interesting read - and Mr. Bell does not skip over potentially "embarrassing" aspects of Virginia's, Leonard's or his mother Vanessa's lives. Nor does he present them in the sensationalist manner that a lesser writer might have scooped to. He is unfailingly honest; he is also respectful and fair. The deep love he has for his subject is evident; however it does not overwhelm the work. The biography is more a piece of scholarship than a memoir. However it is this delicious mean that makes "Virginia Woolf" such a compelling and interesting work. It does not indulge in literary criticism intentionally, however knowing the state of Woolf's life and mind at the time she was writing various novels cannot help but inform a reading of them. That said, it is not for the purpose of examining his aunt's books that Quentin Bell seeks to chronicle her life, I think. Rather, it is the force of Woolf's own personality; her intelligence and the world she moved in (for there is no better place to begin a study of the Modernist writers in general and the Bloomsbury Folk in particular than Bell's books). Besides being perhaps the most complete and evenly tempered account of Woolf's life, Quentin Bell's biography is well written, well documented and, as the best biographies should, puts us as close as we can perhaps get to the subject. We may not feel at the end that we "know" Virginia Woolf - what a ridiculous assumption to make under any circumstance! - but we have been in the presence of one who did, and who has allowed himself to step back far enough to see her and her life objectively. It is this simultaneous distance and intimacy that gives "Virginia Woolf" its authority and it's heart.
Rating:
Summary: Woolf group
Review: The most interesting thing about this biography was the voice of the writer: Quentin Bell who was Virginia's nephew. The assumptions he makes, and the way he judges things are kind of foreign to me, and I think it gives an idea about how things must have been for the Bloomsbury types. Virginia has written that you need to have a clear, unbiased mind to write good fiction; perhaps for non-fiction, bias can be interesting. This is the only biography of Virginia Woolf I have ever read. He made her seem fairly weak, which was hard to reconcile with how strong and bright her writing is. This is a lot more than a collection of facts, and I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: If she only knew valium
Review: Well, after reading this exhaustive biography I think with more or less reason several things. Virginia Woolf was a woman of great intelligence but unbalanced and at the cost of her instinctive life, I think not homosexual as it's said, but mostly uninterested in the sexual part of life. She has the drive to justify this and she said a real artist needed to be nor man nor woman in order to avoid prejudices and to possess a clear vision of the real facts of life, a doubtful point of view because there are great artist with strong sexual drive straight or not. I believe she was surely not primarily so ill at the mental sphere, because all these medications as digital, symptoms as palpitations and physical exhaustion, faints, etc, are symptoms of physical or even social diseases, yes, with repercussion in the psychic life, added to the extremely exigent work of writing his works. For all that I believe V. Woolf was no so mad as it's commonly said and could be saved by a more scientific and modern medicine. Certainly, personal and historical contingences as the death of friends and familiars, WWI and over all WWII with the fear to the Nazi invasion of England and repression against Jews as her husband and intellectuals as herself could not be avoided although I believe by 1941 these fears were objectively less probable. I can' avoid a pity for this woman.
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